Sheeshnag: Oil money set to exchange hands

Oil money set to exchange hands

Whether you consume less electricity or more, resort to any austerity campaign or not, you will continue to get inflated bills month after month from here on. Khawaja Asif, our new electricity guru is, learned to have already pledged a gradual but consistent increase in electricity prices while the petroleum wizard Shahid Khaqan Abbassi has vowed to do the same in front of Uncle Sam’s viceroys in one of their welcome celebration meetings.

Transparency, fair play and merit will all be in the hands of these new faces in the energy sector but don’t ever expect that these will actually be followed in letter and spirit. Even if you hear that Khawaja Asif is a 50 million rupees (gifted) shareholder in one of Mansha’s gobbled IPPs or whether Munir A Malik has been brought in by this duo to supposedly protect them from the sharpened nails of the judiciary, don’t even bother to dig it out. Neither is there any need to find out why Mansha and Nadeem Babar have been included in the energy task force, because after all, they have stakes in nine of the controversial 13 IPPs in the country.

You might also come across information that the Mansha group is about to take over the Muzaffargarh power plant but that won’t be the full truth but only half of it.  One wondered whether to praise the Nawaz government for rewarding Musaddaq Malik—the recent water and power minister under the caretaker set up of Mir Khoso—for unleashing intensified loadshedding throughout the electioneering season or not. But one thing is for sure; all those who can manage to have a relationship with the money laundering ministry of finance and money guzzling entities holding the lucrative IPPs is sure to become the darling of any government in the centre. Doctors, after all, are trained to learn the chemical characteristics of money and oil these days; that’s why first we saw Dr Asim  and then Dr Musaddaq Malik running the affairs of an otherwise unrelated ministry of petroleum and natural resources.

Perhaps the term ‘natural’ might have made them relevant not only to ministry of finance and FBR but also to petroleum. You know why? Because these IPPs are making 35 to 40 per cent of profits just by palm greasing the FBR, ministry of finance and, of course, the incumbent ministers. How they do that is not rocket science to understand for you and me because they simply use the oldest trick in the book of over invoicing, under utilizing and successfully keeping the auditors under their charms.

But if you still believe that this energy team is going to deliver than rest assured that they will deliver but only for the barons they have deals with, not for you and me. There is already a clue as to why Ishaq Dar has not gone for his favourite dollars this time because he is already finalizing a deal with an unknown car importer for flooding the market with the first ever 800 to 1200 cc hybrid cars, which at present are not available even with the best of Chinese smugglers.

Let’s not digress from the topic of electricity and let us share with you the inside that can smelled in the air, that circular debt is such a scam that had it happened in any civilized part of the world—certainly not America because we have seen them and what they did with the AIG and stock exchange wizards—we might have seen by now an Asian Spring bursting out of its seams. Tsunami, or as many have started calling him, Taliban Khan now, is still on a learning path so don’t expect that he will even get a clue about all this because he has already got so much to deal with now, ranging from former Jamaatis to former Leaguers, that his invisible and perhaps nonexistent financial masters might not have the time to learn these power games, simply because they have never been in power.

Let us bring you back to IPPs. There has been an anonymous letter addressed to the speaker of the National Assembly and all the members of the parliament and even to the men wearing black robes, telling how they have swindled the public since 1994. The irony is that those who have been at the centre stage of this, the likes of Mansha, will be deciding the fate of these IPPs.

You know what the fate is, these IPPs would be paid their claimed, rather oiled, billions without caring for the fact that these barons have revoked the sovereign guarantees of the state of Pakistan and above all have challenged the state of Pakistan in the superior courts. Yet the same men will be shown by our well-oiled anchors as the only patriots without telling us that they love to plunder here and surrender that in dollars to off shore accounts.

Guess what, that’s why Ishaq Dar just bunked at least three attempts in the National Assembly to talk on off shore accounts, knowing well that how can he expose all those men in arms.   

Venom Inc. This should not be held against me in a court of law as I solemnly declare that these are absolute lies, dirty whispers and wild speculation that I have heard while crawling in the dark power corridors of the creepy Capital. You will believe them at your own risk Shh...If you have venom to spill please don’t hesitate to share with us on our blog at www.thespokesman.pk