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another gem from Pakistan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/18/pakistani-anti-corruption-official-hangedMystery surrounds death of Kamran Faisal, who led investigation into claims that prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf took bribes
A senior anti-corruption officer involved in investigating accusations that Pakistan's prime minister took bribes from electricity companies has been was found dead in his home in Islamabad.
Kamran Faisal, an assistant director at the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), was found hanging in his government accommodation just days after his inquiry was propelled to centre stage of a major political crisis.
Although police said Faisal's death appeared to be suicide, the incident immediately sparked fears of something more sinister. Faisal's father, interviewed on television, has insisted his son had "strong nerves" and would never have killed himself.
The Express Tribune website said "more than 20" unnamed NAB officials had alleged Faisal had been murdered.
A former colleague of Faisal said he had been under extraordinary pressure in recent days after the country's supreme court renewed its interest in the "rental power" scandal, which has dragged on for years. He was under so much pressure that "whenever he returned from the court he could barely walk", said a colleague.
The saga involves contracts issued by the government in 2009 to buy electricity from 19 "rental power plants" intended to help reduce Pakistan's crippling energy shortages. The scheme was criticised for being expensive and corrupt. Government officials, including the prime minister, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, were suspected of taking kickbacks from the companies that won contracts.
On Tuesday, the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, unexpectedly ordered NAB to complete its case and arrest 16 people involved, including Ashraf, who at the time of the rental power initiative was minister for power and water, earning himself the nickname "Raja Rental".
The court order against a sitting prime minister was all the more dramatic because at the time tens of thousands of demonstrators were occupying Islamabad's main thoroughfare to protest against corruption and demand the resignation of the government.
Faisal was apparently being pulled in two different directions. On the one hand, critics say the chairman of NAB, Fasih Bokhari, was in no hurry to wrap up a highly sensitive investigation and was largely focused on trying to recover money rather than secure prosecutions. But at the same time, Chaudhry, widely regarded as a scourge of the government-led Pakistan People's party (PPP), was demanding action, giving the NAB, a weak and under-resourced organisation, just 24 hours to get the case ready to make arrests.
Chaudhry's court has pursued numerous cases against the government. In June, he forced the resignation of a prime minister on contempt charges after he relentlessly pushed for action on a convoluted case involving investigators in Switzerland and corruption allegations against Pakistan's president, Azif Ali Zardari.
Ayesha Siddiqa, a former official at NAB, said she had been told Faisal was struggling with a job for which he was not properly trained. "This is a typical case of what happens to an investigation when you have high-powered fiddling in it," said Siddiqa. "You had both the supreme court and the government interfering."
Faisal and another colleague, Asghar Khan, were suspended from the NAB after passing on their report into the affair to higher levels of the organisation.
As part of its judgment on Tuesday, the supreme court criticised Bokhari for removing Faisal and Khan from the case.
Zafar Qureshi, a former official at the Federal Investigation Bureau who worked on other high-profile cases involving government ministers, said the pressure of such work could be overwhelming.
"Speaking frankly, I was under a lot of stress," he said. "I was under a lot of pressure. I received "¦ threatening calls from government officials and ministers."
Several times he and his team members were transferred to other departments or even parts of the country, only for the supreme court to intervene and demand his reinstatement.
"I told the court that my life was in danger and if I died an unnatural death the [officials I was investigating] would be responsible for my death," he said.
