Dead Man Walks to High Office

Adil Najam

The above headline is taken verbatim from a story in Dawn (15 November, 2006) because, frankly, I cannot improve upon it. (BTW, no, this is not a Halloween story… this story is much scarier!). The story is indeed a ‘fantastic’ one and Dawn claims to have relevant documents to prove its claims. Here is the story in full:

A ‘dead’ man who managed to rise to a high office in the federal bureaucracy looks to be on his way out. Officials of the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra) were not amused when Dawn approached them to check the amazing resurrection of their Director Finance, Syed Aimal Shah. They suddenly realised that the walking dead man was “surplus” to their staff requirements and must be sent back to his “parent department”.

That would mean Aimal Shah returning to the Pakistan Sports Board where he started his adventurous career in the mid 1980s? He was removed from there in 1991 for going on 15-day leave to take his ailing father to the United States and vanishing there. What he did during his stay in Chicago and Los Angeles until April 1992 is not known. But it is known he contracted a health insurance policy there with the Monumental General Insurance Group of USA.

That turned out to be monumental when almost a year after his return home his mother filed a claim with the insurance company in August 1993 for $51,000, supported by a death certificate and an FIR declaring that Aimal Shah died in a road accident in Islamabad on June 7, 1992.

Both the certificate and the FIR were discovered to be fake by a Pakistani company engaged by the Monumental General Insurance to investigate the claim. That surely killed the claim, but not the spirit of Aimal Shah.

Resurrected in 1993, he got himself reinstated in Pakistan Sports Board in November 1994. This happened even though some officials of the Sports Boards were aware of the ‘death claim’. His time-barred appeal against his 1991 dismissal was granted and in 1997 he was promoted to Grade 18.

His present employer, Chairman ERRA Altaf M. Saleem, told Dawn that he had no knowledge of his director finance’s past doings. But he added the officer would be surrendered to Pakistan Sports Board, along with what has become known about him, for “appropriate action”. Another senior ERRA official confided that though inducted as director finance, Aimal Shah was never allowed to function as such. “From day one the Director-General Finance had refused to accept him. His role was confined to evaluating PC-1s of reconstruction, that too under strict checks,” he said.

In case you got lost in the way the story is written (I did), my understanding is that Mr. Aimal Shah:

• First disappeared from Pakistan and vanished in the US in 1991 (one assumes illegally?). He was then removed from service with the Pakistan Sports Board.
• In August 1993 an insurance claim was filed by his mother with a Monumental Insurance Company in USA claiming he had dies in 1992 in a road accident, and a death certificate and FIR report were attached. Both documents were found to be fake and (one assumes and hopes) that he did not get any money from this scam.
• By November 1994 he was alive again and back at his job at the Pakistan Sports Board.
• In 1997 he was still alive and, apparently, kicking; as he was promoted to Grade 18.
• Now it turns out he is the Finance Director at ERRA: Yes, that is that Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority.

The irony would be a cruel one, but it does seem like someone who could not make money out of his own fake death is now in a position to do so from other people’s real and tragic death! (here).

I am most concerned by the last paragraph of the story with reactions from ERRA officials; so let me repeat it in full:

His present employer, Chairman ERRA Altaf M. Saleem, told Dawn that he had no knowledge of his director finance’s past doings. But he added the officer would be surrendered to Pakistan Sports Board, along with what has become known about him, for “appropriate action”. Another senior ERRA official confided that though inducted as director finance, Aimal Shah was never allowed to function as such. “From day one the Director-General Finance had refused to accept him. His role was confined to evaluating PC-1s of reconstruction, that too under strict checks,” he said.

It seems from the phrasing of the report that Chairman ERRA has either done nothing about it or does not know what to do (read the eurphemism: ‘appropriate action’). More disturbing is the statement from the ‘senior ERRA official’ which seems to suggest that people at ERRA – inclduing the Director-General Finance – KNEW about the antics of good old Shah Saab. Why else, pray tell us, would his activities have been under ‘strict check’?

There are too many things smelling too badly here for me to hold on to my nostrils any more.