RAWALPINDI: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and AntiCorruption Establishment (ACE) on Thursday started probe into over Rs1.6 billion financial scam in the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) and got the record ofaccounts.

On the other hand, RDA wrote a letter to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and NAB to freeze the bank accounts of the people allegedly involved in the scam, as they would either flee the country or family members might make transaction from their alleged accounts.

A senior RDA official told Dawn that the teams of the investigation arrived in the civic body offices and checked therecords of the banks and other available records in the finance offices to further probe the matter.

He said the scam took a new twist as the banks gave new statements while declaring that the missing amount had swelled to Rs1.9 billion.

During checking of the civic agency`s accounts, it was revealed that Rs3 billion were missing since 2016.

The official said there was no record of the funds with the civic body.

When contacted, RDA Director General Kinza Murtaza admitted that the teams had visited the RDA offices and all records were handed over to them.

`Investigations had been started by NAB on reports of embezzlement, while we have written a letter to the FIA to adopt for precautionary measures to prevent people from fleeing the country, she said.

Ms Murtaza said the internal inquiry had almost been completed and it would be brought before the public in a day or two. Besides, reference had been sent to the anti-corruption establishment(ACE). She said the request for freezing of accounts had been recommended to the FIA and NAB.

Meanwhile, in a letter to ACE Punjab, the RDA director general requested to register a case and start aninvestigation into Rs1.6 billion financial scam.

The letter stated that it was brought to the notice of the RDA director general that balance funds available in favour of the authority, in a bank account maintained with the city branch of the National Bank of Pakistan, situated at Liaquat Bagh, Murree road, Rawalpindi, were not sufficient to meet the budgetary requirements of the authority.

A probe was ordered to include former director (admin and finance), present director (admin and finance), ex-deputy director (finance) and present deputy director (finance), ex-assistant director (finance) and present assistant director (finance-I & II) through a questionnaire duly circulated.

On non-receipt of answers to the questionnaire, it was confirmed that original CDRs were missing, hence, a prima facie case, so letters were written to theNational Bank of Pakistan`s city branch, for the provision of details of CDRs and stoppage of payments to all vendors/contractors on all cheques, pay orders or CDRs.

In the meantime, an internal committee was constituted to probe into financial mismanagement and missing CDRs within seven days.

In response to the letter, the National Bank of Pakistan provided a detailed list of parties/contractors/vendors with the number of instruments in their names and amounts against each party.

The list depicts that an amount of Rs1.644 billion was transferred to 22 different parties through 236 transactions.

On receipt thereof, letters have been written to the concerned banks to stop all kinds of payments through cheques, pay orders or CDRs presented for encashment in favour of these beneficiaries.

It is further requested that the embezzled amount of Rs1.644 billion may be recovered from the culprits immediately and deposited into the RDA account along with the punishment under relevant law.