Breaking News: PM Gilani can actually govern Pakistan.

Yes I know its a shock for many readers to read the above statement and many will have fallen off their respective chairs by now. And so I will repeat the breaking news that the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani can actually govern!

The evidence of such a tall claim and some may say a wild allegation has come via an investigative report by Kamran Khan which proves that the PM personally and his government as a whole have excelled in the governance of issuing guns or weapon licences for countless prohibited weapons.

PM Gilani’s health scandal as covered in my last post here shamed him and his office. The PM has scored a brace now by once again shaming his high office by personally ensuring licenses were given for prohibited weapons against all norms and rules. Given such weapons are after all prohibited to one and all, the entire episode shows the respect the chief executive has for rules and worse his open contempt for the rule of law.

Worse the PM has added to the woes of the macho state of Pakistan which is already awash with guns galore, for now the nation has new toys to play shoot and kill with, thanks to the good governance that Prime Minister Gilani has promised to the masses. Instead of providing security and sanity to a nation terrorised by the guns of terrorists, the PM has wilfully presided over the arming of a nation already armed to its teeth.

In such an instance ”The Guns of Gilani’ and not Navarone come to mind. Kamran Khan details the governance of the Gilani gunshop and the report is shared below:

Arm Merchants in Rs20 Billion Trade

Since the last week of March 2008, more than 38,800 people have been issued licences of prohibited weapons such as Kalashnikov, MP5, G3 and Uzi, mostly on direct orders of the prime minister and minister of state for interior.

Most alarmingly, these licences were issued without any police verification or an official check on the background of the applicants, according to an investigation by this correspondent. A whopping 100,000 licences of non-prohibited bore weapons, such as revolvers and pistols, were also issued without any police verification whatsoever during the same 21-month period.

There is no formal or official procedure in the country for a common Pakistani to properly apply for a prohibited bore weapon license other than finding a member of the National Assembly or the Senate having direct connections with the prime minister or minister of state for interior for the approval of license, hence prohibited bore licenses are a precious commodity and arms dealers charge a premium of up to Rs 200,000 for such a license.

Sources in arms dealers’ community estimate liberal issuance of prohibited and non-prohibited weapons licences by the government since April 2008 has generated Rs 20 billion business for weapons dealers in sale of automatic, semi-automatic weapons in addition to massive earnings in selling the prohibited and non-prohibited licences of weapons. The situation also raised serious questions about the exact source of weapon supplies to arms dealers.

Massive monetary attraction, besides other reasons, may have contributed to immense pressure on Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani from parliamentarians to favour them with his special powers to issue licences for all sorts of weapons.

As parliamentarians pressed the prime minister for more and more licences, he introduced an unprecedented quota of weapons licences in September last year by allowing 25 licences per year of prohibited weapons and 20 licences per month of non-prohibited weapons for each member of the National Assembly and the Senate. He extended the favour to MPAs also by allotting them five prohibited weapons licenses per year.

Since March 2008 till June 2009, the prime minister ordered issuance of 22,541 licences of prohibited weapons, mostly making orders on plain papers with certain names scribbled on them presented to him by various MNAs and senators.

In two months after assuming the office of minister of state for interior in April 2009, Tasnim Ahmed Qureshi issued a record 5,986 licences of prohibited weapons, including more than 100 licences that ended up at the Inter Risk (Pvt) Ltd, the security company contracted by the United States Embassy in Pakistan. Inter Risk owners are now facing prosecution for possessing a large cache of illegal weapons.

Qadir Nawaz, the personal secretary of the minister of state for interior, was arrested in the case, while the issuance of about 6,000 prohibited weapons licences in just two months on the direct order of the minister of state is still being probed by the relevant agencies.

This incident caused uproar in the government security services about the scale of corruption and security risks in weapons license system. The prime minister, though rejected allegations of ministerial level involvement in the weapons scam, announced a ban on issuance of licences in June last year.

“If parliament believes in accountability, justice and fair play, it should allow a neutral and thorough probe into the prohibited weapons license case and examine who were those 39,000 people whose names were recommended by various senators and MNAs for Kalashnikovs and Uzis licences as well as those 100,000-plus people who received licences for pistols and revolvers,” said an interior ministry official.

Kudos to ATP and Adil Najam who has led the focus on the issue as shown here and deplored the acts of the PM in issuing so many weapon licences. To end I will echo Adil’s last sentence, do stop issuing the licences Mr Prime Minister!

Prime Minister Gilani is a man of many words and few actions. The PM to his credit or discredit readers can chooise, is always suited and booted and oozes class whilst his performance in Parliament and elsewhere is full of proud rhetoric and promises galore. However his words have yet to materialise into action with Gilani’s governance as the chief executive of Pakistan being pitiful and pathetic.

The Ejaz Hussain Jhakrani health scandal is the most recent example of Gilani’s governance where as Prime Minister he has decided against sacking an allegedly corrupt cabinet minister who is accused of blatantly being engaged in corruption whilst running the Health Minisry.

Jhakrani’s list of achievements and they must be achievements as the PM has chose to retain him including fleecing drug companies, misleading the Lahore High Court and UNICEF and worst of all putting at risk the lives of millions of poor and already unhealthy children for the pursuit of personal profit according to an investigative report by Kamran Khan. And how does the PM react to such planned and deliberate evil?, he moves Jakhrani to the Sports Ministry and so three cheers for the PM and his good governance!

The respected journalist, Kamran Khan writing in The News has published an investigative report into the health scandal and it is shared below:

Mighty Protection for Corruption-Plagued Health Ministry

When Makhdoom Shahabuddin suddenly replaced Ejaz Hussain Jhakrani as the federal health minister last month and terminated the services of Dr Suresh Kumar, the drugs controller, Ministry of Health, on the very first day in office, no official explanation was provided for this tumult in the ministry whose actions affect the life of every Pakistani.

An investigation by this correspondent has revealed that a decision to quickly dispatch Jhakrani from an all-important Health Ministry to the least important Sports Ministry and simultaneous sacking of the drugs controller was ordered when Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was flooded with information on record-breaking corruption in the Ministry of Health.

The prime minister was told that thousands of new drugs were being registered at a supersonic speed at the expense of the local pharmaceutical industry, select few companies were getting the much-needed price revision for their products, and procurements for various programmes of national health funded with billions of rupees of taxpayers’ money were being made on the basis other than transparency, fair play and best value for money.

Specific examples are available to prove that the companies, who had established relationship at the top level of the Ministry of Health, got their new products registered, in some cases within a few weeks, while many others following the prescribed route were made to wait for months and in few cases, over a year.

“On the face of it, the drugs registration process officially travels from bottom to top, but in actual, it was the other way round. There was a price even to get your case included in the agenda of the registration board,” said an executive with a well-known pharmaceutical company, who made secret recordings of his negotiations with important Health Ministry officials for the registration of some new products. The recordings showed that a sum of Rs 0.5 million changed hands at various levels for each of the four products registered by the same company last year.

The scale of money involved in the process can be gauged from the fact, officially confirmed by the Ministry of Health, that some 4,000 new products were registered in the past 18 months. A massive depreciation of rupee against the US dollar last year forced a scramble by hundreds of local and multinational pharmaceutical companies, wholly dependent on import of raw material and finished products, to seek a price revision for their products from the Ministry of Health. A list of pharmaceutical companies, lucky enough to get the prices of their products revised, some substantially than others, by pressing the right buttons at the ministry showed that a flimsy formula was twisted to adjust the chosen few. Specific cases of price revision showed that imported vaccines and medicines of same formulae received different treatment.

The situation, due to an appreciation of the US dollar against the Pak rupee, forced even some of the multinational companies to play to the tunes of masters at the Health Ministry. “Even a passing examination of each of the product that got registered and those received price increase in the year 2008 and last year and informal questioning of relevant staff in the ministry will unfold the whole scam,” claimed a senior Health Ministry insider.

The same source and other informed industry sources relate corruption in the registration and related matters at the Health Ministry to Minister Jhakrani’s decision, soon after taking over as Minister for Health, to induct Dr Suresh Kumar into the Health Ministry as the drugs controller. Kumar was earlier serving at a laboratory, run by the Sindh Health Ministry.

But rampant corruption in the Ministry of Health was not restricted to the issues of registration and pricing of pharmaceutical products, the prime minister had been informed of massive corruption in tens of billions of rupees worth national health programmes such as the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI); National Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health (MNCH); Malaria Control Programme and Hepatitis Control Programme.

In most cases, unqualified, least experienced but politically-connected people were handpicked in the later half of 2008 to run the above-mentioned about Rs 30 billion health programmes of national importance. These programme managers were also being hurriedly changed by the new health minister, though without ordering a formal probe into the misdeeds that impacted almost every Pakistani’s life in the past two years.

The most controversial, however, remained the EPI, the national health programme aimed at protecting children by immunising them against childhood tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertussis, measles, and tetanus.

The children have not been getting the best value for the tax payers’ money for the last two years when the Ministry of Health abandoned a cheaper and much better procurement of vaccines through Unicef in favour of local suppliers of vaccines, including a supplier, who monopolises the supply of critically important measles vaccines.

The procurement of vaccines and other products for the Rs 12 billion EPI programme from the world recognised and cheaper supply chain of Unicef was abandoned by the Ministry of Health ostensibly under an uncontested submission by senior health officials before the Lahore High Court, Rawalpindi bench, pledging to discontinue the purchase from Unicef and initiate local purchase, without informing the court that this would cost more to the children of Pakistan in terms of quality, quantity and above all, the price.

Documents revealing how rules and regulations were tempered with from the most important procurement of vaccines to the printing of material for the EPI programme illustrate how local as well as multinational pharmaceutical companies influenced decision-making from the programme manager to all the upper bureaucratic levels at the Ministry of Health. Jhakrani has been relocated to the Sports Ministry and former drugs controller Suresh Kumar has been sacked, but like all other cases of alleged mega corruption, the perpetrators continue to enjoy immunity against any action.

The Kamran Khan investigation is damning whilst Gilani’s actions and the lack of them equally so. Moreover Gilani’s actions are not even befitting a Prime Minister of a banana republic and provides ample proof that the PM is impotent to act against corruption especially if the accused are fellow PPP men.

What makes it worse is that the PM has at times shown some steel in dealing with poor governance and corruption allegations not least in asking for the resignation of Latif Khosa as Attorney General. However it seem that the PM is a walking talking hypocrite and full of contradictions as he has later appointed the same Khosa as his advisor and promoted Babar Awan who too was accused of corrption in the Harris Steel case as the Law Minister.

An editorial on the scandal published in The News sums ups Gilani’s ‘good governance’ well and it is shared below:

Corrupt and Guilty

Were we to seek a reference point as to just how far our moral compass has degraded we need only look at the workings of the ministry of health under the current government. There were sudden changes at the top of the ministry last December – and now we know why. Makhdoom Shahabuddin replaced Ejaz Hussain Jakhrani as the federal health minister, and the services of Dr Suresh Kumar, who was the drugs controller at the MoH, were terminated on the day the new minister took up his post. Why such expeditious action? Because the office of the prime minister had received a swathe of information about the mind-boggling levels of corruption within the MoH that surpassed even the high levels of tolerance for corruption that lies in every government office and department. The MoH is a ministry that has an impact, somewhere in their lives, on every man, woman and child in the nation. It was being systematically milked by the sacked officials since the day of their appointment. It was not a culture that grew with time, it was operant from the day they took over their new office and started giving orders. They went into their jobs with the clear intention of fleecing the drug companies and defrauding the people they were there to serve. Their intentions were criminal from the outset – and they will almost certainly escape prosecution, or even an in-depth investigation.

These two men and their willing accomplices in the MoH stand as the new benchmark for shame and degradation in public service. Perhaps the most disgusting of their scams relates to the EPI programme, the programme that ensures that newborns receive inoculation against childhood tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertussis, measles, and tetanus. These leeches deceived the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi Bench into discontinuing the purchase of vaccines through the UNICEF programme, in favour of a local company that was selling the drugs at a higher rate than that given by UNICEF. What could be more heartless? Where was the concern or sense of responsibility towards the tiniest and most helpless of our citizens, the babies? There was none. All they were concerned about was lining their own pockets, and those of their political allies and friends, all of whom profited as they did. Those who took the filthy profit are as guilty as the men who engineered the opportunity to make it. Perhaps a small comfort may be derived from the fact that they are now out of office and their cronies likely to be so imminently. Some comfort also that when the scandal was exposed the prime minister moved to do something about it. But the damage is done; it will take long to repair, and the guilty – and guilty they are, trial, or no trial – slip into the margins safe and sound with the money in their bank accounts. Such is the nature of public service here in the Land of the Pure, and the failure of these individuals’ moral compass taints us all.

The Prime Minister is equally responsible for the health scandal by way of acts of ommission in not sacking Jhakrani and not ordering an enquiry into the corruption allegations for which if proved then leeches like Jhakrani and the PM must pay a heavy price. The Prime Minister is left diminished and degraded by his actions or the lack thereof and has brought shame upon himself and his esteemed office.

Rampant Corruption Causing Collapse of Govt Organisations by Kamran Khan

Government decisions, in total disregard to merit, fair play and transparency, based on personal monetary gains for a few individuals in the government have grossly compounded the economic miseries of Pakistan and turned several government organisations into insolvent corporate entities, according to an investigation during which dozens of well-placed and informed sources in the government and corporate sectors were interviewed.

Positioning of several handpicked corrupt and incompetent officials in key appointments at the government-run companies, in many cases without an active approval of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, has left a trail of incredible cases of corruption never witnessed before.

Many policy decisions with financial implications in the government-run corporations routinely carry an imprint of a few individuals, who maintained close personal and business ties with some of the most important people in the government between 1997 and 2008.

One of them, who was probed for his most shady commodity deals struck during the last tenure of the PPP government, now appears to be the main motivating factor behind the loss making ventures of Pakistan Steel and the Trading Corporation of Pakistan. His reach now extends to the National Bank of Pakistan, where his former employee now holds a key position.

The consequences of former President Pervez Musharraf’s National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) and an absence of a potent anti-corruption organisation in the country seem to have contributed to this fearless unbridled corruption that now plague Pakistan’s economic and business edifice. Following examples illustrate reasons that require an anti-corruption crackdown before it is too late:

Crash of Pakistan Steel Pakistan Steel, a sheet anchor in Pakistan’s infrastructure development, had a reserve of Rs 11 billion and an inventory of products worth at least Rs 6 billion in June 2008.

By the second week of the current month, in space of only 54 weeks, Pakistan Steel has almost turned into a bankrupt state institution with current liabilities of Rs 21 billion.

Most shockingly, the Pakistan Steel management, which opened new annuls of corruption during this period, has already consumed the entire amount of employees’ gratuity and provident funds besides swallowing the earnest money deposited with the organisation by its contractors and suppliers.

Blast furnace, the backbone of Pakistan Steel, is running at 15 percent capacity in the absence of quality iron ore while its main production units of billet mill and billet caster are standing almost idle delivering a negligible output.

Reams of documents are available with this correspondent that prove how this national treasure was plundered through irrational spot purchases of raw material and equipment, grant of freight contracts at the price 20 times more than the running rate, the sale of Pakistan Steel products at an amazingly lower rate than the cost of production in the past one year.

Such was the invisible control of a crony of a government high and mighty in the affairs of Pakistan Steel that his personal office in Clifton became the place where the suppliers and buyers of Pakistan Steel would queue everyday to negotiate any sale or purchase agreement related to Pakistan Steel.

No wonder that three directors left their jobs as Director Finance of Pakistan Steel during these 54 weeks and the organisation is now being run without a functioning director finance and director commercial.

The quantum of corruption at Pakistan Steel was accidentally revealed last week when a major real estate dealer of Dubai met a senior Pakistani security official during a reception in Islamabad and informed him that a senior Pakistan Steel executive had asked him to invest Rs 60 crore in an apartment complex before Dubai property meltdown began in September last year.

PIA Faces Bankruptcy

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is another example where a prime national institution is facing financial and administrative collapse. PIA suffered a loss of Rs 13 billion in the year 2007 that rose dramatically to Rs 40 billion in the year that ended in December 2008.

A member of the board of directors of PIA, while talking confidentially with this correspondent last week, admitted: “PIA’s balance sheet is a fit case to declare bankruptcy and shut the company down.”

He went on to predict: “With these losses and present number of employees, PIA will not be able to make any profit in the next 50 years at least.”

While the company is struggling to run its day-to-day financial affairs with half-a-dozen of its aircraft grounded just last week, PIA’s Managing Director Captain Ejaz Haroon, another personal friend of government high and mighty, came up with an idea of Rs 160 billion purchase of new aircraft for the airline.

Haroon met the PIA board members in June last to break the news of this mammoth purchase and desired that his early negotiations with the Airbus industry and Boeing to buy 27 narrow body aircraft be kept “secret” from PIA shareholders and, of course, the media.

Ignoring the fact that the airline was not able to foot its most essential bills, Captain Ejaz Haroon revealed that he had an understanding from “someone” in the government that the Government of Pakistan could provide a sovereign guarantee (another US$2 billion in national debt) if the Ex-Imp Bank and a major European bank were ready to lend PIA US$2 billion for this ambitious purchase.

Both Boeing in America and Airbus in France are facing an immense financial crunch and are seeking clients like PIA to keep their operations going.

Although, international prices had some contribution in tripling PIA’s losses for the year 2008, but the situation worsened, as documents available with this correspondent revealed, following a long trail of gross irregularities in purchases such as Rs30 crore worth of Zamzam water for Hajis at the cost of Rs 450 per can, a price around five times more than the previous purchases of Zam Zam water by the PIA.

Manipulations of ticket sales and cargo handling through travel agents in Pakistan and abroad left PIA with more losses that run into tens of crores of rupees.

PIA’s woes are aggravating as the management appointed on political reasons continues to oblige their masters by letting the PIA’s payroll to swell. While facing a record financial crunch and ever rising losses last year, PIA managing director obliged the PPP government by inducting 6,000 workers in the airline, which already had the highest employees per aircraft ratio in the world.

By adding 6,000 persons to its list of permanent employees, the PIA set a unique example in the airline industry worldwide because that was the period when even the most profit making airlines of the world were either laying off their staff or negotiating salary cut agreements with its employees.

“This was the last nail in PIA’s coffin,” said a member of the PIA Board of Directors, who had vigorously opposed the idea of fresh induction into the airline.

Merit has no play in either postings or transfers or even roster setting for flight crews in the airline but the worst display of flouting of transparency, rules and regulations was displayed when the PIA decided to induct fresh air hostesses a few weeks ago and inducted 12 air hostesses at the recommendation of PPP office-bearers of interior Sindh.

In total disregard to discipline and fair play, some of the employees who were thrown out of PIA on criminal charges were graciously reemployed and offered foreign postings.

TCP Jolt Exchequer

Unprecedented and fearless corruption plagued the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) and with it the national exchequer as the country lost billions of rupees when an influential federal minister, along with the same friend of the government high and mighty, manoeuvred the appointment of an income tax officer as the TCP chairman in the second half of last year.

This appointment preceded a well-hatched strategy to plunder the government’s trading activity such as procurement of fertilisers, sugar and wheat from international market and a blatant attempt to re-nationalise export of rice from Pakistan by procuring rice locally at an inflated price.

Simultaneously, the new handpicked chairman introduced non-transparent procedures, mostly through backroom deals, to import commodities and their shipping at grossly inflated rates and these imports were timed as such that the local markets could also be played for maximum profits.

To further maximise the profits to the loss of Pakistani national exchequer, new contracts to handle cargo (stevedoring) at ports were awarded at a price that was often thrice the price paid by the TCP for the similar job in the previous year.

Inland transportation agreements with private transporters were so lucrative that they some time hired the government’s own National Logistics Cell (NLC), which incidentally failed to win the TCP work, for transportation of commodities from ports to destinations all over the country.

“These contracts were so lucrative that the favoured contractors some times outsourced their work and still made hefty profits notwithstanding the profit they shared with the TCP top management and their masters,” a well-informed TCP source said.

The situation took such a serious turn last year that Prime Minister Gilani had to intervene to stop the TCP, aided by a friend of high and mighty also the central figure in Pakistan Steel corruption, from an attempted informal re-nationalisation of the rice export from Pakistan by procuring rice from the local market at an inflated price.

“The rice operation alone cost the country about Rs 3 billion,” according to a TCP insider. But several TCP sources confirmed that an estimated loss of about Rs 20 billion was caused to the national exchequer by engineering ill-conceived, non-transparent import of Urea in the country last year.

The TCP sources pointed that the race to make quick money was so fast early this year that the TCP chairman routinely ignored objections of Transparency International Pakistan and parliamentary committees in awarding contracts to handpicked that had formed a cartel to monopolise the TCP work in blatant contravention to the government rules governed under the PPRA.

The corrupt TCP management apparently hit a jackpot when the government instructed the TCP to energise the Gwadar Port by ordering some commodity imports at the new port.

“A cursory examination of cargo handling contracts awarded for wheat imports at the Gwader Port will show that sums allowed for the work was five times more than the market price,” a knowledgeable TCP source said, while giving documentary evidence of incredibly low offers that were available to the TCP for the same job.

The stocks available with the TCP and import orders were manoeuvred with the sole idea of benefiting the vested interest with no remorse for the suffering of population. That’s why people of Pakistan are these days forced to buy sugar at an all-time record high price of about Rs 50 per kg. This price situation on sugar would run well into the month of Ramazan.

As the pie of corruption keeps expanding, so was the greed of the top TCP official and his masters until April this year when Minister for Commerce Makhdoom Amin Fahim in consultation with the prime minister decidedly removed the TCP chairman but without ordering probe into his actions.

National Bank Jolted

The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) is another national institution facing doubts about its health and deals concerning government linked individuals, companies and projects.

“On the face of it, the National Bank of Pakistan is seen as financing government backed projects or troubled public sector entities but at the back influential, politically-linked individuals and contracts benefit from this financing,” said an informed NBP official.

For example, a recent decision by the NBP-led consortium to provide an emergency financing of Rs 10 billion to corruption ridden Pakistan Steel may eventually benefit private individuals who are calling shots in Pak Steel affairs from their private office.

The National Bank’s role and interest in enhancing its exposure and affairs of some sugar mills of Sindh and their links with powerful political individuals has left many questions unanswered.

The NBP, which also serves as the treasury for Government of Pakistan, is being curiously watched for its role and growing interest in controversial rental power plants scheme of the government.

The bank, it seems, is ready to take a big exposure in the scheme and had already agreed to finance at least two of the projects.

A whopping Rs 21 billion worth rental power projects have already run into controversy because of the government’s mysterious inability to fully utilise the already-installed electricity generation capacity in Pakistan and armtwisting of other Pakistani banks to finance the shady scheme.

It remained no secret that all top bankers of the country were summoned to the State Bank of Pakistan head office in Karachi early this month. There they had taken the impression that they had no choice but to finance the rental power scheme.

Port Qasim Sinks

The Port Qasim Authority (PQA) is a prime example of influence peddling by politically-linked people in getting posted to lucrative positions. A few weeks ago, an intense controversy swirled around Afsar Talpur who was made PQA’s acting chairman. The port authority was already in the middle of charges regarding illegal allotment of land and huge corruption in contracts on port related work.

As it surfaced that the acting chairman, already an official at the PQA, was himself at the centre of many of the charges, the top offices of the government were told that though posted on the orders of the elderly father of an influential personality, the case may create a major embarrassment for the government.

For several days, in the month of May this year, several directors jockeyed for lucrative assignments as the alleged corrupt acting chairman was asked to resume his previous assignment. An intense battle to win the most lucrative positions at the port authority continues to date.

But there was no substantial inquiry to probe the charges involving the allotment of Port Qasim lands through non-transparent procedures and into questionable contracts that have the Port Qasim as one of the most “lucrative” government departments.

A senior government official, however, termed the reports about the malpractices in Pakistan Steel, PIA, TCP, NBP and Port Qasim a mere propaganda. He said such kind of information was totally wrong and politically motivated. He said opponents of the present government were out to level allegations against the present set-up without any foundation. He said in all the above mentioned organisations, merit was followed as part of the government policy. However, detractors of the government continue to raise baseless objections.

Published in The News

I am reassured that Ch Nisar Ali the Leader of the Opposition and Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee has taken notice and demanded a report and investigation. The PPP government has few fans and at best reluctant supporters like me who wish to see democratic governments deliver. Thus the PPP government must answer in detail the questions put forward in Kamran Khan’s article  and clear the polluted air that stinks of corruption as the vultures are circling.