A federal minister has taken action against a senior civil servant who reported on a CEO’s misuse of the IMF-mandated State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) Act 2023, instead of moving against the CEO who amassed a significant fortune.
A confidential letter from the minister to his secretary, dated August 26, has been leaked to the media after The News published its first report on the misuse of the SOEs Act. The letter targets a senior bureaucrat, currently in a higher office, accusing him of “repeated violations” of the SOEs Act and Prime Minister’s Office directives during his previous role as Special Secretary in the ministry. This is the same officer who had previously alerted the PM Office about the SOE scandal.
In the letter, the minister claims the bureaucrat attended over 15 board and sub-committee meetings of the SOE without ministry consultation, allegedly in contravention of PM Office guidelines. This is the same SOE whose CEO earned Rs355 million in salary and benefits in just 32 months before moving to another SOE under the same ministry.
The minister directed that all board decisions and recommendations involving the bureaucrat be considered “null and void” and that the SOE should not entertain any future input from him. He also ordered the immediate reassignment of the SOE’s ex-officio board seat to the ministry’s most senior serving officer, insisting the bureaucrat’s involvement was “in his personal capacity, and not as the policy position of the ministry.”
Contrary to the minister’s position, sources allege the letter is an attempt to victimize the officer who had earlier informed the Prime Minister’s Office about how the SOE Act was being exploited to benefit select CEOs of state-owned enterprises. A source commented, “Instead of investigating the CEO who made hundreds of millions under the law’s cover, the minister has chosen to target the officer who raised the alarm.”
Another source suggested the prime minister should immediately order a high-level inquiry to determine who is in the right—the minister or the bureaucrat.
The SOE Act 2023 was passed as an IMF conditionality to improve governance, transparency, and efficiency in loss-making state-owned enterprises. However, as previously reported by The News, the law has been widely abused by SOE boards and executives to grant themselves extraordinary financial perks, even as their institutions continue to perform poorly.
While the prime minister has formed a high-level committee to review governance issues and financial irregularities in SOEs, the serious dispute that has emerged between a minister and a bureaucrat still awaits a fair investigation.
