One of the posts that I am proud of is the one I wrote about Master Tiles’s Sheikh Mahmoud Iqbal’s vision of replicating Paris in Gujranwala. There was so much going on in that one:
The society would replicate all the landmarks of Paris in Gujranwala
A token white guy was appointed as a figurehead chairman to give it a French vibe (the tallest guy in the picture below is the Chairman).
The French chairman left a comment on my post about converting to Islam and becoming part of this amazing project that will internationalize Pakistan on account of shared values. You can read his comment here.
An illegal lottery scheme was launched to market the project.
Sheikh sb was facing a cash crunch as Bahria Town reportedly didn’t pay him for the tiles and instead handed him a piece of land.
Master Tiles was also planning an IPO.
If you haven’t read the post, I recommend you click on the link below and read it before moving forward.
There was this news today about Sheikh Mahmoud Iqbal being arrested for non-payment of his GEPCO utility bills of Rs.12 crore.
If you are familiar with Pakistani businesses, you would know that they don’t pay their vendors and suppliers including utility companies on time. There was the below tweet yesterday. The question is why him and why now?
Now if you go by various quote tweets and replies to the original tweet, it appears that Sheikh Mahmoud Iqbal is a hero and is paying the price for standing up for his principles. Below is one example of such a tweet.
But if you go to WhatsApp groups, they are talking about how the latest anti-corruption drive is against all and sundry, but especially the elites __ “Elites aren’t being spared anymore”.
Regardless of which view you subscribe to, this isn’t the hill you want to die on.
In the lottery scheme that he launched, he scammed ordinary people out of at least Rs.12.7 billion rupees (he reportedly sold 127,000 lottery tickets/forms for Rs.100,000 each). Below is the image of people protesting outside his Master Tiles office/factory for being scammed in the lottery tickets of Le Paris Housing Society.
Even if the Rs.80 crore extortion request was genuine, it comprises a mere 6% of the amount he scammed ordinary people for his real estate lottery scheme.
There are no heroes in this story.