Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairperson Imran Khan was on Tuesday given 15 days to respond to a questionnaire regarding his use of helicopters owned by the Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa gove
rnment.
Khan, whose party is in talks with other political outfits to form the gove
rnment in the Centre, faces a probe by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for using a gove
rnment-owned Mi-17 and Ecureuil helicopters for 74 hours, causing a loss of Rs2.1 million t
o the national exchequer.
Former KP chief minister Pervez Khattak and former speaker of the provincial assembly, Asad Qaiser, accompanied Imran t
o the NAB Peshawar office, where he stayed for an hour. Strict security measures were put in place around NAB’s Peshawar office. Security was also tightened in Hayatabad and surrounding areas.
Earlier, the PTI chief had been summoned on July 18, but he sought more time to appear due to electioneering activities.
T
he matter of the helicopter use had come t
o the limelight on January 29 when a private TV channel reported that the former KP gove
rnment spent millions of rupees on Khan’s use of the provincial gove
rnment’s helicopters. NAB chairman Justice (retired) Javed Iqbal in February directed the bureau to launch a probe on t
he matter.
In its response on t
he matter, the then PTI-led KP gove
rnment had denied that Khan was given any helicopter for his private and personal use. A spokesperson said tha
t since 2013, the gove
rnment had not used helicopters for any purpose other than official business.
Published in Daily Times, August 8th 2018.
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