The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has raised serious concerns about Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s gold mining sector. The bureau alleges the province suffers losses worth trillions of rupees due to irregularities in auctioning and exploration.
Official documents show NAB’s inquiry uncovered major issues. Leaseholders are openly subletting mining rights. They charge between Rs500,000 to Rs700,000 per excavator per week.
This practice generates an estimated weekly income of Rs750 million to Rs1 billion for leaseholders. Meanwhile, the government receives only a tiny fraction of this revenue. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur defended his government’s actions. He stated that his administration auctioned placer gold blocks at significantly higher prices than before.
He said a single block previously reached Rs650 million. His government set a new minimum price of Rs1.10 billion. They sold four blocks for approximately Rs4.6 billion for a ten-year lease.
Gandapur explained that authorities failed to conduct any official auction for 20 years, which resulted in widespread illegal extraction. He stated that officials advertised the recent auction multiple times, conducted it legally, and notified NAB, whose representatives attended the process.
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Documents from a high-level NAB meeting on August 7 show that the bureau’s investigation uncovered deep-seated problems. NAB alleges that officials deliberately miscalculated the reserve price for gold blocks. They ignored a crucial 2015 study by the National Centre of Excellence in Geology, Peshawar, which identified significant gold reserves ranging from 0.21 to 44.15 grams per ton.
The KP Minerals Department reportedly bypassed its own 2022 auction rules to benefit specific bidders. Additionally, the department halted a geological mapping project for placer gold in 2023, despite starting it in 2022, suggesting an attempt to conceal the true mineral value.
The bureau estimates over 1,500 excavators are operating illegally in the region. With leaseholders charging exorbitant fees per machine, the financial scale of the alleged corruption reaches into the trillions of rupees, representing a massive loss to the national exchequer.
