How Pakistan Tried To Bury Top Navy Officers’ Questionable Biz Under Bahria Foundation – OpEd

In 2007, when Pakistani scholar Ayesha Siddiqa published Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, the backlash was swift and ferocious. Then-president Pervez Musharraf branded her a traitor, blocked her book launch, and threatened her with treason charges. Her crime was not espionage or sedition, but scholarship: documenting what she called “Milbus” (portmanteau for “military business”), the hidden business empire of Pakistan’s armed forces.

Prominently highlighted in her work was the Bahria Foundation, the Navy’s welfare trust whose ventures into real estate in the 1990s revealed how military capital could be transformed into private gain for high-ranking officials. The story of its partnership with a then-obscure developer named Malik Riaz would grow into a cautionary tale of murky deals, official denials, and a judiciary reluctant to probe too deeply.

The sweetheart deal

The Bahria Foundation’s very entry into real estate itself came with terms that raised eyebrows. In its mid-1990s partnership with Riaz, the Foundation contributed no financial capital. Yet the agreement promised it 10% of the company shares and a quarter of all developed plots. More strikingly, Riaz was allowed to buy out the Foundation’s share at a fixed rate of Pakistani Rupees (PKR) 100,000 per plot: a figure that’d be much lower than the market value once the development was complete.

The Navy’s name and insignia gave the project credibility, while Riaz gained a brand and a powerful patron. The Foundation risked nothing, but its officers stood to benefit enormously if values climbed as expected.

The entire arrangement appeared designed to create windfall gains, not a prudent investment for the welfare of naval personnel.

Arrests and allegations

By 1997, trouble was brewing. As the housing schemes advanced, allegations surfaced of fraud and kickbacks to naval officers. Riaz was arrested amid investigations by the Navy and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. For a moment, it looked as though the deal would unravel.

The very fact of his arrest suggests that suspicions were serious enough to warrant action from the country’s most powerful institutions. But the momentum soon dissipated. The inquiries produced no formal convictions. Instead, the record was quietly tidied up.

“Nothing adverse was found”

When the dust settled, Admiral (retd.) Fasih Bokhari, then Chief of Naval Staff, announced that investigators had discovered nothing untoward. His verbatim quote was “nothing adverse was found”.

Yet this blanket exoneration never squared with the facts. If no wrongdoing existed, why had Riaz been arrested in the first place? Why did the Foundation feel compelled to sever ties and take him to court over his continued use of the Navy’s name? Bokhari’s statement looked less like vindication and more like a decision to bury an embarrassing episode.

Judicial closure

The dispute over branding went to Pakistan’s Supreme Court, which in 2001 ruled in Riaz’s favour. He could continue using the Bahria name and insignia, the judges said, because his investments were too deep to undo.

The judgment effectively legitimised his private empire, Bahria Town, while allowing the Navy to retreat without further scrutiny. The ruling sent a message that neither the military nor the judiciary wished to reopen the ledger. The Foundation launched its own rival scheme under the “Naval Anchorage” label, and the episode was declared closed.

Silencing the messenger

When Siddiqa later chronicled the affair in Military Inc., her conclusions were clear: Bahria Foundation had monetised the Navy’s prestige for a venture that exposed officers to conflicts of interest and opened the door to personal enrichment. Rather than confront the details, the state chose to attack her. Musharraf’s threats and the forced cancellation of her book launch illustrated how unwelcome her findings were in official circles.

The treatment of Siddiqa was itself a form of burial—a warning that digging too deeply into military enterprises would be punished.

A model case of Milbus

Two decades on, Malik Riaz has become one of Pakistan’s most recognisable tycoons. His Bahria Town projects stretch across the country, their name a lasting reminder of a Navy partnership that was never fully explained. 

Meanwhile, Bahria Foundation ventures now range from maritime services, dredging, and shipping to schools, colleges, bakeries, IT firms, and real estate projects. Despite the diversity, virtually none of these businesses are publicly listed or subject to independent audits. Revenues are shielded from scrutiny under the guise of welfare, allowing the Foundation to operate as a commercial giant in the shadows—leveraging the Navy’s name while avoiding the obligations that come with transparency.

The culture that enabled the Malik Riaz partnership has not dissipated; if anything, it has been institutionalised. Procurement irregularities flagged by Pakistan’s Auditor General, tax exemptions granted without oversight, and the seamless migration of retired officers into boardrooms suggest that Milbus remains alive and well. Critics argue that the Foundation still functions less as a welfare body and more as a private trust for the officer class, perpetuating the same cycle of conflicts of interest and hidden enrichment that Ayesha Siddiqa documented nearly two decades ago.