Fazaia Housing Scheme fraud: Suspects submit plea in SHC over return of allottees' money

In the Fazaia Housing Scheme fraud case, the arrested suspects submitted a petition to the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Saturday, in which they stated that they are ready to return the money back to the allottees.

The SHC has ordered freezing the bank accounts of Fazaia Housing Scheme till further orders, after the National Accountability Bureau began a new probe into the alleged fraud.

Suspects Chaudhry Tanvir and Bilal Tanvir were earlier arrested in relation to the probe. After the submission of their petition, the High Court sought an answer from NAB in the inquiry of the housing scheme.

The court said that it wanted to know about NAB’s response regarding the return of money, as claimed by the suspects, to the affected people.

SHC had ordered freezing of the bank accounts after the allottees submitted a petition against the builders.

The petition said that they were allottees of the housing scheme and they were not being given possession of the land despite the payment of installments worth millions of rupees.

The counsel for the plaintiffs produced details of booking and installment of challans.

According to The News report, NAB had earlier said that their inquiry revealed that the FHS had been illegally launched by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) in partnership with Maxim Properties in 2015 on an illegally consolidated or adjusted land in Deh Allah Phihai located in District Malir’s Taluka Shah Mureed.

The NAB prosecutor said that in accordance with an agreement with the PAF, the construction company sold various units of the scheme to the public and collected billions of rupees in the name of booking, allotment and development of housing units of the said scheme.

However, added the prosecutor, since 2015 the management of the FHS has neither handed over the plots to the allottees nor carried out any significant development work, so the public stand cheated out of their money.

Tanvir Ahmed and his son Bilal Tanvir were also signatories to the agreement with PAF officials regarding the launching of the FHS and involved in the sale of its units to the public, said the prosecutor, claiming that the petitioners along with the co-accused had collected Rs18 billion from 6,000 people affected by the fraudulent scheme.