Those who appointed Hamesh Khan as head of the Bank of Punjab must have gone through his credentials. I am sure they knew his less than required professional and academic qualifications to head a commercial bank and the fact that he had a US passport or that his family was settled there. The Bank of Punjab was made a scapegoat and so were its thousands of account-holders. Loans given without proper evaluation were bound to be defaulted and they did. A few influential barons made a clean getaway, while the government of Punjab is going to foot the bill, so that account-holders don’t suffer. Hamesh Khan, as expected, has managed to escape with the help of powerful lobbies that still call the shots in the government.
Have we learnt any lessons from history? None, I am afraid, for there has been no accountability. More Ramesh Khans will be appointed as CEOs in state-run corporations and banks in the future and, upon a change in government, will manage to escape. A review of key appointments made in the SECP, the PIAC, PEPCO, the CAA, the Pakistan Railways, the Planning Commission of Pakistan, NAB and the judiciary shows that not much has changed. People holding foreign nationalities with families residing abroad can and will flee with just a suitcase, as was done by Shaukat Aziz, who despite the president’s repeated requests to come back hasn’t returned. This kind of expatriate Pakistanis holding dual nationalities and poor credentials have damaged the image of our expatriate brethren, who have done so much for Pakistan.