The NAB Diaries - Part One

Courtesy Teeth Maestro (www.teeth.com.pk)

By Amer Nazir

My name is Amer Nazir. I live in exile in London. It is a forced exile. I left Pakistan as soon as NAB took my name off the Exit Control List after a period of three years. If I had not left, probably I would have also disappeared forever like my best friend Ahmed Shujaudin – a leading architect.

God willing and the Teeth Maestro permitting, I intend to write about my journey from a modest middle-class background to one of the top IT entrepreneurs of Pakistan before I fell to the extent that I became homeless. Once a familiar face in the so-called corporate social circles in Karachi it came to a point where no one was willing to take my phone call – after all, I was a NAB accused. I was never to be convicted but it did not matter. The logic was straight forward. If Shuja had been kidnapped then surely Shuja must have done something terrible to cause it or else at least deserve it…

The scope of these four narrations hopefully to be published during the next four weeks is to narrate a very brief account of my business journey, my labor of love, after a briefest possible introduction of myself, the major space will be given to my NAB experience, the actual inside account, and the behavior and the attitude of our kings of the castle.

The hope is that some of you may see a part reflection of your own lives in this account and it may perhaps help you in some way. Another hope is that once it reaches the Free World and once fully investigated the world will realize that the common Pakistanis have never had the chance and that they deserve an honest break. There is also this hope to try and shame the shameless. And last but not least, and though it is a long shot, perhaps even Musharraf may realize the extent of damage he has done. He may finally understand, that although it is true for every institution, but especially when it comes to matters of justice, a self-designed system, a crude accountability set-up which is from day one formed on principles that are outside universally accepted rule of law – is soon bound to become abusive and corrupt itself…

For the non-Pakistanis, NAB is the acronym for The National Accountability Bureau. The flag ship of Musharraf. The main reason he gave for assuming power. He said that the nation had become too corrupt. NAB is composed of serving and retired army officers with unlimited powers. They are answerable to none. Present in every major city, each NAB office has a jail within its compound where prisoners are kept without any possibilities of bail. Some of them picked up from the streets, most from their beds at dawn. Several have died during interrogations…

And lastly, my narration will detail how a proud Pakistani was forced to claim asylum in his wife’s homeland. Who although married to a British national for twenty years had never applied for the British nationality and had instead sponsored his wife for the Pakistani nationality instead…

I belong to an educated middle-class family which never had sufficient savings in the bank. I studied in Cathedral School and then Cadet College Hasanabdal and finally Government College Lahore. Now in retrospect, when one has a 20 by 20 vision, I think I was naive from the outset. I was not ready to compromise. I could never reconcile to the fact that I could actually be less than any high and mighty that I came across. I rejected constraints. I could do anything… as long as nature was just…

And then however it happened, starting from a salary of Rs. 1800 after graduation, I eventually became the Founding Director of Hi-Tech Business Machines at the age of twenty-four and few years later it’s Chief Executive. This company was the first IBM dealer in Pakistan and it later re-launched Compaq in the country as well. With offices in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad it employed 100 personnel which were to increase to 250 over the years.

Hilinks Pak was my next venture which launched hilinks.com the first international portal from Pakistan that was accessed in 56 countries. The first cyber based financial instrument the e-card was also launched by this company prior to Citibank. The next milestone was the first Telco-grade ISP in Karachi called Hinet which had twenty-five thousand users before it was forcibly closed down one day.

Collectively, the companies were called the E-Tech Group of companies. This set-up was the only one of its kind in the country. With an ISP, a hardware and software company, and an advertising company in the portfolio, and with products such as a portal and an e-card about to be granted credit and debit function by participating banks – all this enabled the group to conduct the first B2B and B2C transactions in Pakistan in local currency. Along with many other firsts in the market, the Group also successfully managed remote trading for the first time on Karachi Stock Exchange on a trial basis. It was already providing access to KSE at zero delay free of cost to the visitors on hilinks.com with the assistance of Reuters.

The final glory of the group was the mutual co-branding of the e-card and the PIA frequent flyer card with PIA. This was announced in a press conference by the COO of PIA and myself. We had already re-launched the PIA site and had signed an agreement that gave the E-Tech Group rights to sell PIA cargo space and passenger seats on-line and on a worldwide basis, manage the last minute auction of seats, and establish the PIA call centre. Several international travel related industry partners including hotels and banks showed their interest to join the alliance which would have brought PIA at par with modern airlines in terms of customer services. It is worthwhile to note here that the E-Tech Group did not charge any fee to PIA for the services rendered. All profits were based on new and increased revenue streams because of the turn key solutions that we had offered to implement. In fact, the group saved PIA one million dollars to start with which otherwise would have gone to a foreign company when it linked the sabre system with the frequent flyer database.

And this was the stage when NAB came in… and since then PIA has struggled to follow the vision that we gave them… the actual outcome of which is for the people to judge themselves.

A burning ambition is an excitement that does not let you be. It sets you out on strange adventures. On a lonely path that promises great fortunes in terms of wealth, satisfaction, and recognition. The concept of being self-made seems as the ultimate prize, a dream – at the risk of waking up one dreary morning to discover that it is at best only a rationalisation which is suppose to somehow justify the precious time that has gone by unnoticed, when it may even seem like a half-hearted consolation, perhaps even self-deception, with the rewards coming too late if they do come at all and when too much cost has already been paid in advance. And yet the yearning of a good life, of a purposeful and eventful life can still be felt in the wake. Even when one is forced to think that perhaps inherited wealth is the only solution – that it is the only wealth that can be truly enjoyed since it may not demand much sacrifice or responsibility… but yet there will remain people like me who will never draw a line, who will never learn, who will never be content with whatever they are born into, and they will still attempt, they will do it all over again no matter what the cost until the very end…

I did manage to have my share of excitements. My group provided the first internet connectivity to ICTN Asia and Musharraf gave me a trophy, the photograph was carried by all the major newspapers. I had met Musharraf earlier also at parties when he was the Corps Commander Mangla – but that is another story… I was also frequently invited to dinners at the Governor House when Soomro was governor. We had contributed financially and technically to his Caravan Karachi endeavour and he had given me a trophy in recognition at a public event at the Governor House…

However, the worse aspect of entrepreneurship especially in a non-structured economy is raising capital. The only form of capital available is through equity participation and I don’t think there is any need for me to say more… this tells a story by itself…

On assuming powers Musharraf had declared IT as a major sector for development that his government would pursue. Perhaps, he had been told by his advisors that IT had the potential of becoming the cottage industry of Pakistan and that we will soon beat India at her own game – but that did not mean that the banks were ready to invest in intangibles with there being plenty of tangible plots and textile loams available for mortgage and re-mortgage. The banks did not find any consolation in the human collateral either – it being the most inconsequential especially when it comes to Pakistanis.

But there was no stopping the Presidential courtiers. On the last day of the first ITCN, I was approached by the convenors of the exhibitions and was told to declare at a press conference that I had signed foreign contracts worth US 35 million. I refused… A month later, when I returned from a presentation to the Pakistani/American IT entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, the first few newspapers that my secretary placed on my desk had screaming headlines that included my group having signed major international contracts for the said amount… the statements came from our Minister Dr Atta Ur Rehman… this must have pleased the President tremendously even though not even ten percent of this revenue was ever expected to realize and it did not also in the end…

Coming back to raising capital, a classmate from Cathedral, a PIA captain, had approached me several times in the past to make PODF which stands for Pilot’s Occupational Disability Fund and which is the financial arm of PALPA as my partner – but I had refused each time… I had personal reasons. My elder brother is a PIA captain and an ex-air force officer. And I had walked out on him several years ago, the reasons for which I have so far refused to publically discuss in spite of much provocation by the NAB officers… I always told them to ask my brother instead… but his version was already known and that too officially and on paper… I was a financially corrupt man beside the several other major flaws in my character… which even to this day, when not much has been left of me and my family, he insists on forwarding to newspaper editors..

However, in 2002, just when I was close to a partnership deal with Faisal Investment Bank which was later absorbed by Faisal Islamic Bank, my captain classmate insisted day after day that I should not allow a project of national importance to fall into the hands of foreigners… and finally I succumbed once he and the PODF board assured me that my brother will never have anything to do with it…

I was burning with ambition as usual. I was willing to do anything that could make my group achieve what I had envisioned. The terms of the new partnership were unconventional but I was willing to go to any extent to see my dream come true. PALPA did not pay me for my fifty percent equity in Hilinks that I passed on to them – but it did not matter to me, I was overjoyed that they would invest to take the project forward and that they will also act as the Lender Of Last Resort to the group. However, they did pay me for half the share holding of Hi-Tech, and that entire amount I deposited as my equity in Hinet the next day – the new company that we formed immediately and which owned the ISP… And as time was to tell, subsequently, PALPA also refused to pay me salary for the next two years as the Chief Executive… for the entire period of our partnership. It is therefore no wonder that having put everything in a group that I believed in, including the proceeds from the sale of my thousand yard house in Defence Society, into a business that I had nurtured for eighteen years… I was bound to become penniless and homeless soon after…

My brother did not take the news well when he heard about the new partnership. The events that were to unfold in the next two years therefore were a result of some serious manoeuvrings. The PALPA board came up for elections every two years. And this time, a very senior captain named B was not sure whether he would be able to win or not. He had been elected a few times in the past and now wanted a last stint as President before he retired – but he was not confident about winning this time around since he had just been acquitted from a rape case… But there was good news as well. The entire country was excited about the accountability initiative in Pakistan and the Chairman NAB was Captain B’s personal friend, while the Vice Chairman was my brother’s colleague from Air Force. It was a comfortable setting – rather perfect in fact, almost impossible to ignore. Accountability was the war cry in the streets of Pakistan at the time. People had developed fresh hopes due to Musharraf’s promises of eradicating corruption forever. In their minds they hoped to see the corrupt swinging from trees from their bedroom windows when they got up in the mornings – and at the same time, it was also easy to accuse anyone and be counted amongst the moral… and thus, it should not take much imagination to guess what happened next…

My brother and Captain B declared in front of the PIA captain community that the current trustees of PODF ( serving captains) were embezzling huge amounts of money from the Group along with me… and that they had solid evidence. They also declared that the Chairman NAB had promised to put all the culprits behind bars and recover all the money… It was to be honest a rather battered old election slogan but which now possessed a fresh breath of life due to the nation’s leader whose own bread and butter depended on it. And therefore, it should not come as a surprise that the panel of vigilantes won the election rather easily and it now came upon them to make good their election promise…

There were a few technical problems though. Firstly, the case was outside the mandate of NAB since government, public or bank funds were not involved. Secondly, the Group had signed arguably the biggest co-branding in the country and a contract that could return the entire investment within perhaps even a year, and thirdly there were these several audits… the latest, a third-party audit, conducted by Ferguson only few weeks ago accounted for each and every penny. And then ironically, Ferguson was also the auditor of PALPA and PODF as well at the time… there could not have been any valid basis for suspecting foul play.

Moreover, there could also not be any doubts on any other aspect such as the viability of the project in case even if someone was blind to the PIA alliance since there was present a three-week old evaluation report from Ferguson Consultants in their capacity as the local partners of PriceWaterHouseCoopers. The report concluded that the value of the group had increased five fold even prior to the PIA alliance…

The above was a difficult preposition for NAB but the command came from the top. It had to be executed. And therefore, the only weapons in their arsenal, to start with and for the next three years, were the almost fantastic stories by their captain friends and the personal testimony of an estranged brother. Perhaps, there was also this overwhelming hope that I might have made a mistake somewhere which would eventually be discovered. Nonetheless, this was enough for NAB to come into action. They entered the picture ruthlessly, and though for the first year they out rightly refused to hand over any documentation in spite of the fact that my name was continuously on the Exit Control List throughout this period in later years they became either too reckless or else too arrogant and started to leave a massive paper trail as evidence. I yet kept on challenging them and once at a juncture of extreme frustration, they even opened a new and completely un-related case against me and my wife since she was also a director in the companies. And though they blatantly refused to charge us for any specific crime once again or take us to a court, they often threatened to have my wife extradited from UK since she had left for London taking our daughters to safety. As usual, in this particular case as well, the onus remained on us, the accused, to prove our innocence… at times against unspecified crimes – rather than the other way around.

‘But Brigadier Abassi,’ I once pleaded. ‘It has been three years now. Metaphorically speaking, no dead body has been found so far, neither has a murder weapon been discovered, nor is there any missing person whom one can presume as having been murdered, whose body has been possibly disposed and buried somewhere – so can you please tell me my crime?’

‘If we knew the exact details… do you think you would be sitting so comfortably in that chair…’ was the reply.