Staff Reporter
Islamabad
The President of Pakistan has approved the recovery of over Rs.17 million in favour of University of Sargodha, while upholding the Banking Ombudsman’s decision against a private bank where the previous university administration had invested over Rs.775 million by manipulating interest rates allegedly in connivance with bank officials.
Early last year, the university management had filed a complaint with the Banking Ombudsman pointing out misappropriation in three consecutive investments made in 2015 with the private bank’s university branch. The mode of misappropriation in each case was that the said bank would first offer the highest profit at the rate of 10.5 per cent kicking other banks out of competition. Then, the bank would receive university investments after a lapse of couple of weeks on the reduced negotiated rates of 8.45%,7.50% and 6.60%. These underhand dealswere never brought on record.
Thus, the resulting financial loss to public exchequer remained covered up till early last year, when a special audit by the Higher Education Commission of the 8-years tenure of the former Vice Vice Chancellor, Dr Muhammad Akram Chaudhry, revealed this scam. Thus, the university suffered a total loss of Rs.17 million in profits.
