Balkh council member to face graft charges

MAZAR-I-SHARIF (PAN): A senior anti-corruption official on Thursday said his department had received more than a hundred land-grab complaints against a member of the Balkh provincial council.

Shamsullah Javed, head of the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption (HOOAC) in the northern zone, told a press conference here his department had collected evidence against the public representative.

The accused would be referred to the attorney office in near future, he said, without giving the public representative’s name. Javed added the council member had grabbed public property at the Hairatan port, where he had built shops and had sold out a piece of the land.

He said the complainants had also accused the council member of usurping their properties — a claim dismissed as unfounded by the council chief, Mohammad Afzal Hadid.

He said the council was a public body whose members could never act against the wishes of their constituents. The council would extend cooperation to the HOOAC if it presented concrete evidence in support of its claims.

Hadid warned of suing the anti-graft unit in case it failed to produce valid proof in support of its allegations.

ma/mud