Pakistan Steel Mills located 40km south east of Karachi came under some serious controversies after reports continued to appear in the media in early 2009 of some serious financial problems that may have effectively left this organization in some serious debt which may actually extend to well beyond a substantial few billions, reportedly upto the tune of Rs 22 billion, if not more. The first set of reports emerged during middle half of February 2009 following which the Competition Commission of Pakistan undertook a detailed investigation and came up with some very alarming discoveries which place the Abbas Steel Group, owned by Riaz Lalji, also a close associate of Asif Ali Zardari, being interincisly involved in some serious corruption issue in the previous PPP tenures and has been labelled as “fugitives from law” in turn was a close associate of Asif Ali Zardari being solely responsible for recent recent Steel Mill debacle.
The initial set of accusations generally started off with accusing the, then Chairman of Pakistan Steel having a strong bias towards the Abbas Steel Group [ASG] accusing them of allocating all the billets being produced by Pakistan Steel Mill to be exclusively sold to the Abbas Steel Group at well below the market price while other competing vendors, who had actually made full advance payments at official market price, were left stranded and starved literally running their own factories into debt and ultimate closure.
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