The federal cabinet approved a Joint Investigation Team report on One Constitution Avenue on Wednesday 4 November, ordering the towers back to their original purpose. The building will become a five-star hotel within months, the developer’s company has been blacklisted, and the National Accountability Bureau has three months to file references against those named. But the hardest question stays open: what happens to the 254 apartments sold in a building approved as a hotel, and who pays the buyers back.
What the cabinet decided
The cabinet approved the JIT report on Wednesday. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said the government had taken legal possession and would bring in a major international hotel chain to run it as a five-star hotel. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said the inquiry found bidding manipulation, unauthorised rule relaxation and suspicious documentation. The cabinet also accepted a fresh, transparent re-auction of the land and buildings, and a new name for the project, after the Foreign Ministry objected to the One Constitution Avenue address. The towers stand in Islamabad’s Red Zone, the same high-security district that was placed on high alert after the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa emergency, with Section 144 imposed. The CDA’s Member Administration will take charge, and the government says the report will be made public, though no date has been given.
The seven findings, one by one
The briefings list seven findings behind the change from hotel plot to luxury flats. First, the original auction was cancelled without CDA Board approval. Second, a later auction was held under revised terms. Third, height, covered area and parking limits were relaxed without board approval. Fourth, the lease went to a company outside the winning four-member consortium. Fifth, the bank guarantee was removed shortly before the lease was signed. Sixth, the JIT questioned the documents, including allegedly forged signatures and irregular lease registration. Seventh, 254 apartments were sold on 99-year sub-leases although the project was approved as a hotel with serviced apartments. The pattern is the point: the project changed purpose at every stage, and board approval was missing wherever the rules required it.
The refund formula buyers are waiting on
The JIT recommends buyers get their principal back, plus interest at the Karachi Interbank Offered Rate (KIBOR) or an inflation adjustment. One detail matters for who pays: the CDA collected fees from buyers before disclaiming responsibility. That puts the authority, not only the developer, in the compensation question. The government has not said who will fund the refunds, what the total will cost, or when the first payment comes. A legal tension remains unresolved. Earlier this year the Islamabad High Court ruled buyers acquired no independent ownership rights and must claim against the developer. A state-paid refund would sit awkwardly beside that ruling, and the report’s publication may show how the government squares the two.
Three numbers that frame the case
The dispute runs back 21 years. In 2005 the CDA allotted 13.5 acres of prime Red Zone land to the BNP Group for about Rs4.88 billion, about Rs361 million an acre, for a five-star hotel. In January 2019 the Supreme Court ordered the company to pay Rs17.5 billion in eight instalments, about three and a half times the 2005 price. The company paid a first instalment of Rs1.7 billion, then missed Rs2.916 billion due in 2022. The third number is the clock. The prime minister ordered the JIT on 30 June 2026 and gave it 60 days, led by a Grade-21 NAB officer with members from the FIA, FBR, SECP, Intelligence Bureau and ISI. The deadline fell at the end of August, and the cabinet approved the findings on 4 November, more than nine weeks later.
What happens next
NAB must file references within three months, so the deadline falls in early February 2027. The CDA must run a fresh auction, find a hotel operator, and publish the promised report. Twenty sub-lessees have appealed the high court ruling, so the buyers’ legal position is still moving. The courts are already the arena for such questions: this week the Federal Constitutional Court barred the Peshawar High Court from hearing detention cases in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. NAB references are the route the state has used before, and they can end in long sentences: Mazari and Chattha were handed 10-year sentences in October. Three tests will show whether the decision holds: does NAB file on time, when is the first refund paid and by whom, and when is the report published with a named operator and a price. Until then, the towers remain what they have been for 21 years: a hotel that was promised, sold as flats, and is now promised as a hotel again. For more national news from Pakistan, see our National News section.
