The NAB has been granted permission to sell off the properties of Bahria Town.
ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) can now move forward with the August 7 sale of five Bahria Town properties in Rawalpindi and one in Islamabad after the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday rejected petitions against the planned auction.
NAB Rawalpindi announced a new auction of six Bahria Town properties at the NAB office in Sector G-6/1, Islamabad, shortly after the division bench, which was composed of Chief Justice Sardar Mohammad Sarfraz Dogar and Justice Muhammad Asif, issued a short order.
Following Malik Riaz’s designation as an absconder in the £190 million Al-Qadir Trust case, the properties are up for auction.
Bahria Town Chairman Malik Riaz Hussain responded to the development by stating that they would be prepared to take part in any arbitration and carry out its ruling, if
In a post on his official X account, he asserted that over the past few months, government agencies had been applying unprecedented pressure, resulting in the arrest of dozens of employees, the freezing of the company’s bank accounts, the seizure of vehicles, and other severe measures that had paralyzed all of Bahria Town’s operations nationwide.
According to a controversial real estate tycoon, the crackdown has “paralyzed” the housing society’s operations.
According to the statement credited to Malik Riaz, “the situation has reached a point where we are being forced to completely shut down all Bahria Town activities across Pakistan.”
“Millions of Pakistanis have invested trillions of rupees in Bahria Town from Karachi to Lahore and Islamabad,” he said.
Court cases
Farooq H. Naik, a senior attorney representing Bahria Town in court, had previously claimed that the auction notice from NAB was “illegal, deceptive, and issued with mala fide intent.”
He claimed that because Bahria Town was not a signatory to a plea deal, the properties were being unfairly singled out. He claimed that no reference pertaining to the £190 million case mentioned Bahria Town as an accused party. He cautioned that the auction would create a risky precedent that would erode investor confidence and due process.
Notably, NAB Prosecutor Rafay Maqsood argued that the chairman of Bahria Town, Ali Riaz, has defaulted on payments after entering into a plea bargain under the £190 million settlement. For this reason, NAB took steps to recover the outstanding amount under Section 33E of the NAB Ordinance, 1999, through an auction of the pledged properties.
Maqsood explained that the petitioners approached the IHC after one of the lower courts refused to hear the petition. As he noted, the high court had initially stayed the auction on June 12, the very date it was supposed to take place. Thereafter, NAB submitted an application to lift the stay on the auction.
The legal representatives of Bahria Town emphasized that the company was not a participant in the £190 million corruption scandal which stemmed from the settlement made with the NCA in 2019.
So far as the verdict has been issued, the auction is scheduled for August 7.
Auction tomorrow
Following the lifting of the IHC’s stay order regarding the auction in June, the NAB has now scheduled the auction for the six properties for this Thursday.
As per the NAB guidelines, the winning bidders would pay 5% of the value of the properties on the auction day, 10% in one month, and the remaining 85% in three months.
In a notification issued on Tuesday, NAB identified the six properties which included corporate offices on Plots 7-D and 7-E in Bahria Town’s Phase-II, Rawalpindi, which were estimated to be Rs871m and Rs881m, respectively. Also included were Rubaish Marquee and Lawn in Islamabad (Rs488m), Arena Cinema (Rs1.1bn), Bahria Town International Academy (Rs1.07bn), and Safari Club (Rs1.2bn) in Bahria Town, Rawalpindi.
Also, the accountability NAB filed a reference against Malik Riaz and some Sindh politicians in February for the land transfer to Bahria Town.
Published in Daily Pak, August 6th, 2025
