The 40 Families Who Own Pakistan's IPPs: Names, Plants, Payments

A sourced citizen explainer of the business families behind Pakistan's independent power producers, drawn entirely from public records

By Asad Baig · Lahore · April 2026 · Approx. 19-min read

The sentence the newspapers buried in their business pages

In July 2024, two Pakistani newspapers, Dawn and The Nation, published the same quiet sentence in their business sections. Most readers missed it. The sentence said:

"Most of Pakistan's independent power producers are owned by approximately forty families and groups."

That sentence sits at the centre of this article. Let me unpack it.

Pakistan has roughly one hundred and one active independent power producers, IPPs, generating electricity for the national grid. About half are owned by the government or its various entities. The other half, the private ones, are concentrated in the hands of approximately forty Pakistani business families.

Forty families.

Pakistan has 240 million people. Forty families are receiving the bulk of the private share of capacity payments. That works out to a population-to-beneficiary ratio of roughly six million to one.

Now, I want to say this clearly before I name a single name. I do not believe that being rich is wrong. I do not believe that owning businesses is wrong. I do not believe that earning profits is wrong. This article is not about that.

This article is about how a small number of families came to occupy a position where they receive guaranteed, dollar-indexed, government-protected returns from contracts that ordinary Pakistani citizens had no voice in approving, and that nobody now seems able to undo.

A note on what this article is and is not

Before the names, the methodology.

Every family profiled in this article is named because they are connected, through publicly verifiable records, to specific independent power producers in Pakistan. The sources include:

• NEPRA tariff filings and licensing records (a public database, available at nepra.org.pk)

• CPPA-G IPP lists (public, at cppa.gov.pk)

• Stock exchange disclosures of listed companies

• The 2020 Power Sector Inquiry Report headed by Muhammad Ali, former SECP chairman

• The 2018 National Accountability Bureau list of 71 politicians and bureaucrats under investigation

• FIA charge sheets and Lahore Special Court orders that are matters of public record

• Mainstream Pakistani journalism from Dawn, The Express Tribune, Business Recorder, Profit by Pakistan Today, and The News

• Companies' own published biographies and stock filings

What this article does not do:

• It does not allege crimes that have not been documented in public records

• It does not characterise individuals beyond what verifiable sources support

• It does not single out anyone for ethnic, religious, or political reasons

• It does not allege that wealth itself is illegitimate

Several of the individuals and entities mentioned here may disagree with the characterisations in their respective sources. They have multiple platforms, the courts, the media, official statements, through which to respond. The work of citizens is to hold institutions and individuals accountable on the basis of public records. The work of those institutions and individuals is, when needed, to defend themselves with facts. Both are legitimate. Neither should be silenced.

The intent throughout has been to inform, not to defame. To document, not to attack.

With that said, here are the families.

The Mansha empire

Mian Muhammad Mansha, born in Lahore in 1947, is today consistently ranked the wealthiest individual in Pakistan. His estimated personal net worth is approximately $5.6 billion. The Nishat group, which his family controls, has assets of approximately $28 billion across banking (MCB Bank), cement (DG Khan Cement), insurance (Adamjee), hotels (Nishat Hotels), automotive (a Hyundai dealership), and, most relevant to this article, power generation.

In 1970, the Mansha family was ranked fifteenth among Pakistan's wealthiest families. They ran Nishat Textile Mills, founded by Mian Mansha's father in 1951. A solid mid-sized textile business. Respectable, but not extraordinary.

Twenty-three years later, in 1993, they were the richest family in Pakistan. How this happened is not a secret. It is documented in news archives from the 1990s.

In December 1990, the government invited bids for Muslim Commercial Bank, MCB, one of Pakistan's most profitable financial institutions, founded in 1949. Five bids were received. The two highest came from the Tawakkals and the Adamjee-Yunus Brothers consortium, the latter being MCB's previous owners with first right of refusal.

The third lowest bid came from a consortium calling itself the National Group, headed by Mian Muhammad Mansha. By all conventional metrics, this should have ended the matter. Instead, a different process unfolded.

The Mansha consortium was asked to match the highest bid. They did. They were declared the winners on January 9, 1991, the first Nawaz Sharif government, just two months old. MCB was sold for Rs. 2,420 million with a down payment of Rs. 804 million.

Within months of acquiring MCB, the same Privatisation Commission sold five of Pakistan's eight major cement plants to Mansha and his associates, DG Khan Cement, Maple Leaf Cement, Pak Cement, and White Cement. By 1993, two years after the MCB deal, the Mansha family had jumped from fifteenth to first place among Pakistan's wealthiest.

The National Accountability Bureau filed a case against Mansha in connection with the MCB acquisition. That case has been pending for over twenty-six years.

From this base, the family entered the power sector under the 1994 Power Policy. The plants:

All four operating under the take-or-pay structure. All four collecting capacity payments whether or not they generated electricity. In FY2023-24, these four plants together collected estimated capacity payments in the range of Rs. 60-80 billion, combined.

In October 2024, two of these plants were "voluntarily" terminated as part of the government's renegotiation efforts. The Prime Minister praised the family for "national interest." What was less reported was that those plants were within two to three years of their natural contract expiry anyway. By accepting early termination, the Mansha group received accelerated payment of all outstanding receivables, billions in dues, that they would otherwise have collected over a longer period.

That is one family. There are thirty-nine more.

I have written about the Mansha story in detail at The Mansha Empire: From the MCB Bank Sale to Lalpir Power.

The Dawood-Engro complex

Hussain Dawood is, by any biographical measure, an impressive figure. Educated at the University of Sheffield and the Kellogg School of Management. Member of the World Economic Forum since 1992, the first Pakistani to achieve that status. Awarded Pakistan's Hilal-i-Imtiaz in 2025. Recipient of an honorary award from the Republic of Italy. Tragic personal history, he lost his son and grandson in the 2023 Titan submersible implosion.

He is also the chairman of Pakistan's largest private power empire.

The Dawood family had been one of Pakistan's most prominent business houses in the 1960s, before Bhutto's 1970s nationalisation devastated their holdings. The post-2002 reconstruction of Dawood Hercules Corporation, and the subsequent acquisition of controlling stakes in Engro Corporation in the late 1990s and 2000s, returned them to commercial prominence.

In 2012, the Dawood Group acquired control of HUBCO, Pakistan's first private power plant, from National Power International Holdings. From that point, the Dawood-Engro complex became Pakistan's largest private power producer.

In FY2023-24, HUBCO and KAPCO together received Rs. 46 billion in capacity payments while generating zero units of electricity. The figure was confirmed publicly by Gohar Ejaz, the former federal minister, in July 2024. HUBCO alone received Rs. 23.2 billion in the 2021 circular debt settlement, divided into cash, 5-year bonds, and 10-year bonds.

Read that line again. HUBCO alone received Rs. 23.2 billion in a single circular-debt settlement, divided into cash and bonds.

What this means in practice is that the Dawood-Engro complex has successfully achieved a position where it is being paid not just from current revenues but from future bonded debt of the Pakistani state.

I have written about the Dawood story in detail at The Dawood Story: HUBCO, Engro, and the Thar Coal Plants.

Nadeem Babar, the architect inside

If one figure in this story embodies the structural problem of Pakistan's power sector, it is Nadeem Babar. Not because he is the wealthiest. Not because he owns the largest plants. But because his career, more than anyone else's, perfectly maps the conflict of interest that defined the system.

Babar trained as an investment banker at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the United States. He moved to Credit Suisse First Boston, specialising in international project finance. In Pakistan, he developed power projects for the Coastal Power Corporation and El Paso International. By his own published biography, he had been involved in over 150 power plants across 18 countries before establishing his own ventures in Pakistan.

He used this expertise to set up Orient Power Company in 2003 under Musharraf's 2002 Power Policy, the same policy whose drafting he had been involved in as an advisor to the Punjab government. He later established Saba Power. He acquired Oursun Solar, which obtained a tariff of approximately 132 US cents per unit at a time when global solar tariffs in competitive auctions were 3 to 4 cents.

THE OURSUN MATH

While global solar tariffs in 2017-2018 ranged from 3 to 4 US cents per kWh, Nadeem Babar's Oursun Pakistan Solar plant obtained a tariff of approximately 132 US cents per kWh under Pakistan's upfront tariff structure. This is approximately 33 times the international rate. The tariff was approved while Babar was simultaneously serving on Pakistani government advisory positions related to energy policy.

Then, in 2018, Imran Khan, the politician whose entire brand had been built on attacking IPP corruption, appointed Nadeem Babar as Chairman of the Energy Reforms Task Force, and subsequently as Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Petroleum.

At the moment of his appointment:

• Orient Power was the biggest defaulter to Sui Northern Gas Pipelines, owing Rs. 2.659 billion

• The London Court of Arbitration had ruled against Orient Power in a billing dispute

• SNGPL had issued disconnection notices that were not enforced

• Babar publicly claimed he had "left" Orient Power, while admitting to retaining over 25% shareholding

The 2020 Power Sector Inquiry Report named Babar as a direct beneficiary of IPP payments. He was excluded from the cabinet meeting that discussed the report due to conflict of interest. The report was subsequently buried.

I have written about Babar in detail at Nadeem Babar: The Architect Inside, and the Oursun Solar Tariff.

The Sharif family's quiet IPP

Suleman Shehbaz is the son of Pakistan's current Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif.

In November 2020, the Federal Investigation Agency filed a formal charge sheet against Suleman, his father, his brother Hamza, and others, alleging the laundering of approximately Rs. 16 billion through 28 benami bank accounts between 2008 and 2018.

Shehbaz and Hamza were eventually acquitted by the courts. Suleman never returned to face trial. He has lived in London since 2018. He is officially a proclaimed offender, a fugitive from Pakistani justice.

In September 2022, the Lahore Special Court ordered the National Bank of Pakistan to attach 13 bank accounts of companies associated with Suleman, including Al-Arabia Sugar Mills, Ramzan Sugar Mills, and Chiniot Power Limited.

Chiniot Power Limited is a 62.4 MW bagasse-based independent power producer. It generates electricity from the waste produced by Sharif family sugar mills, and sells that electricity into the Pakistani grid under capacity payment terms determined by NEPRA under the renewable energy framework.

Therefore: a man who is officially a fugitive from Pakistani justice, living in London, refusing to return, owns a power plant that continues to receive capacity payments from the Pakistani government. The Pakistani government making those payments is headed by his father.

ONE QUESTION WORTH ASKING

If a private citizen owed sixteen billion rupees in a documented FIA money-laundering case, would the Federal Board of Revenue allow that citizen's businesses to continue collecting payments from the government? The answer is no. The same standard does not appear to apply when the citizen in question is the son of the Prime Minister.

No formal action has been taken to address this conflict.

I have written about this in detail at Why Does a Fugitive's Power Plant Still Get Paid by the Pakistani State?.

The Saifullah family of KPK

The Saifullah family of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has produced multiple federal and provincial ministers across multiple governments. Salim Saifullah Khan was Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources. Anwar Saifullah Khan was Federal Minister for Petroleum. Humayun Saifullah Khan was a federal minister. The family has held political positions across PML-N, PML-Q, PTI, and other affiliations.

The family also owns Saif Power, a 229 MW combined-cycle gas turbine plant in Sahianwala, Faisalabad, established under the 2002 Power Policy framework.

The intersection of long-term political access to energy ministries and ownership of energy generation assets is, in itself, a story. Whether that intersection has produced specific policy benefits to the family's commercial interests is a question that NEPRA records, ministry decisions, and tariff history would be the appropriate place to examine.

The Jahangir Tareen / JDW group

Jahangir Tareen was disqualified from Pakistan's parliament for life by the Supreme Court in 2017 for financial dishonesty. He is, in the strict legal sense, no longer eligible to hold elected office in Pakistan.

He continues, however, to operate independent power producers through the JDW group, JDW Sugar Mills Units 2 and 3, both bagasse-based plants under the 2006 renewable energy framework. He has been paid roughly Rs. 2.5 billion in capacity charges in recent years.

The bagasse IPP framework, introduced in 2006, was sold publicly as renewable energy policy. In practice, it gave sugar mill owners, already politically powerful, already protected by sugar import controls and price supports, an additional channel of state-guaranteed income. They are called "renewable" because they technically use a renewable input. In practice, they are a transfer mechanism wearing a green label.

The Sapphire Group

The Sapphire Group, controlled by the Abdullah brothers (Mohammad Abdullah, Yousuf Abdullah, Shahid Abdullah, and others), has interests across textiles, dairy, fibres, retail, and power generation.

In the power sector, the family operates three 49.7 MW wind plants, Sapphire Wind Power, Tricom Wind Power, and Tenaga Generasi (jointly with the Dawood Group), under the 2006 renewable energy framework. Each plant is structured as a separate legal entity with its own NEPRA licence, allowing the group to operate just below capacity thresholds that would otherwise trigger different regulatory treatment.

The family is also involved, through cross-holdings, in other generation assets in the wind and solar sectors.

The other significant names

The full list of forty extends well beyond the families profiled above. The ones whose footprint is meaningful enough to be named in this overview include:

The Atlas Group, controlled by the Shirazi family, Atlas Honda, Atlas Battery, multiple financial services subsidiaries, and a presence in the renewable IPP sector.

The Habibullah Group, diversified industrial conglomerate with interests including Habibullah Coastal Power Company, established under the 1994 Power Policy.

The Saigol family, historically one of Pakistan's largest industrial dynasties, with continuing interests in textiles, banking, and a complex web of power-sector cross-holdings.

The Habib family, Habib Bank, House of Habib, Habib Construction, with documented IPP-sector involvement through associated entities.

The Fauji Foundation group, the military-affiliated welfare conglomerate operates Fauji Kabirwala Power (157 MW) and has cross-holdings in other generation assets. Strictly speaking not a "family" but a comparable concentrated-ownership structure.

The Hashoo Group, Sadruddin Hashwani's hospitality and real-estate empire, with documented investment positions in the power sector.

The Lakhani Group, diversified industrial group with leather, sports goods, and energy interests.

The Tabani / Adamjee-related interests, multiple entities with historical connections to the original Adamjee industrial complex.

Various sugar-mill-derived bagasse IPP owners, the Khairpur, Hamza, Shahtaj, Mehran, and Al-Moiz sugar groups, each operating bagasse IPPs of typically 30-60 MW under the 2006 framework, each collecting capacity payments alongside their primary sugar businesses.

Foreign-partnered ventures, Rousch Pakistan Power (a joint venture historically involving foreign sponsors), Engro Powergen Qadirpur, Liberty Power Tech (Saigol-affiliated), and several others.

The full list, with NEPRA licence numbers, capacity, fuel type, and ownership chain, is maintained at the CPPA-G website and the NEPRA licensing portal. Both are public databases that any citizen can access.

What I have profiled here is roughly the top tier, the families whose footprint is large enough to define the system. The remaining thirty or so families operate plants typically in the 30-230 MW range, under the same contractual structures, collecting capacity payments under the same arrangements, with the same political protection.

The 2018 NAB list, 71 names, almost no convictions

In October 2018, the National Accountability Bureau released a list of 71 politicians and bureaucrats under investigation for corruption-related matters. The list included five former Prime Ministers, Nawaz Sharif, Shaukat Aziz, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Yusuf Raza Gilani, and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain. It included multiple chief ministers, federal ministers, and special assistants.

Several names on the list had clear power-sector connections, former energy ministers, advisers, and bureaucrats whose tenures had coincided with significant IPP decisions.

The cases ground forward for years. Almost none resulted in convictions. None resulted in the recovery of significant sums for the public treasury.

The structure of accountability in Pakistan, when it comes to powerful interests, is designed to fail. The structure of accountability when it comes to a junior official who steals fifty thousand rupees from the post office works perfectly. The senior official who approves a billion-rupee tariff distortion that benefits a politically connected family, that official will retire with honours.

This is the architecture. The Prime Ministers come and go. The architecture remains.

I have written about the NAB list in detail at The 2018 NAB List: 71 Politicians and Bureaucrats with Power Sector Links.

What binds them together, not party, but structure

When I look at the forty families as a whole, what I find is more uncomfortable than the simple story of one corrupt party.

They are spread across PML-N, PPP, PTI, PML-Q, JUI-F, ANP, MQM, and independent affiliations. They donate to multiple parties. Their family members serve in different parties' governments. Some members of the same family hold positions in different political camps, which is itself a kind of insurance policy.

What binds them together is not ideology or political loyalty. What binds them is a shared structural relationship to the Pakistani state.

That relationship has three components.

First, contracts. Every one of these families operates under Power Purchase Agreements that are, by international comparison, extraordinarily favourable. Dollar-indexed returns. Take-or-pay structures. Capacity payments regardless of production. Sovereign guarantees. International arbitration as the dispute resolution mechanism. These contracts are legal. They are also, examined together, a transfer mechanism from Pakistani consumers to a small number of beneficiaries.

Second, regulation. NEPRA, the regulator that should have constrained these contracts, has across thirty years approved tariff structures that allowed systematic excess returns above legal limits. This is documented in the 2020 Inquiry Report. The regulator's response to the inquiry was to claim it had not been "consulted", a technically accurate, substantively meaningless deflection that I have described in detail in my pillar on capacity payments.

Third, political protection. When the political moment comes for confrontation, as it did in April 2020 with the cabinet vote to release the inquiry report, the families' political networks reach into the highest levels of every government. Cabinet meetings get reversed. Reports get buried. Renegotiations get scoped narrowly. CPEC gets excluded. Domestic plants whose contracts were already nearing natural expiry get terminated with accelerated payment, allowing the families to claim "national interest" while losing nothing of substance.

This is the structure. It is not the work of one corrupt prime minister. It is the work of an entire political-business establishment that has, in different ways and at different times, served the same forty families and the same structural arrangement.

I am not interested in tribal political loyalties on this issue. The next election will produce another government from the same political class. That government will have the same opportunity to fix the system. Whether it does or not is what matters, not which party it represents.

Citizens who treat this issue as partisan are letting themselves be played. The system has survived because its beneficiaries have made sure that no party can be blamed in isolation, and therefore none can be effectively challenged. The only way out is to make energy reform a non-partisan demand on every political force, regardless of which one currently holds power.

What the forty families' wealth actually looks like

It is one thing to know that forty families dominate Pakistan's IPP sector. It is another to understand what that means in financial terms.

The 2020 Power Sector Inquiry Report documented that 16 IPPs from the 1994 policy alone had:

• Collectively invested Rs. 518 billion of equity capital

• Earned profits exceeding Rs. 415 billion

• Paid dividends totalling over Rs. 310 billion

• Achieved profit multiples of up to 18 times the original investment

• Achieved dividend multiples of up to 22 times the original investment

• Achieved full payback of the original equity investment in two to four years for some plants

Read those numbers slowly. An equity investment of Rs. 518 billion turned into dividends of Rs. 310 billion in less than the contract life, meaning the original investment was returned, in cash dividends alone, multiple times over, while the underlying asset (the power plant) continued to operate and generate further returns.

This is not a successful private-sector enterprise. This is a transfer mechanism with the legal form of a private-sector enterprise.

For comparison: if you had invested Rs. 100 in the Karachi Stock Exchange index in 1994 and held it through 2024, you would have approximately Rs. 800, an eight-fold return over thirty years, before adjusting for inflation. The 1994 IPP investors received eighteen times their original equity in profits, plus twenty-two times in dividends, while continuing to own the underlying assets.

The Pakistani electricity consumer paid the difference.

What citizens can demand

I want to end this article with five specific things every Pakistani citizen can demand from the political class, regardless of which party that citizen happens to support.

These are not radical demands. They do not require constitutional amendments. They do not require international cooperation. They are entirely within the existing legal and regulatory framework of Pakistan.

One: Publish the full 2020 Power Sector Inquiry Report. It exists. It has been buried for six years under the formal pretext of various procedural reasons and the informal pretext of foreign pressure. Civil society organisations have requested it under right to information laws. Their requests have been rejected or ignored. Demand its full publication.

Two: Conduct the forensic audits the report recommended. All 1994 and 2002 policy IPPs. The methodology exists. The legal framework permits it. The estimated recoverable amounts, approximately Rs. 1 trillion per the 2020 estimate, would fund every social program Pakistan has been told it cannot afford.

Three: Pursue legal recovery of identified excess profits. This requires courts willing to act, regulators willing to investigate, and political leadership willing to back the process. The legal framework exists. The choice is whether to use it.

Four: Publish the full ownership records of all IPPs in plain Urdu and English. Names. Beneficial ownership chains. Politically exposed person disclosures. Capacity payments received per year per plant. This information should be as easily accessible to a citizen in Multan as the timetable of the next train from Lahore to Karachi.

Five: Make support conditional. The next time a politician, any politician, any party, asks for your vote, your endorsement, your donation, ask whether they will commit, in writing, with specific timelines, to the four demands above. If they refuse, withhold support. If they commit and then break their commitment, withhold support next time.

The only thing politicians ultimately fear is loss of political support. Make energy reform, and accountability for the families profiled in this article, a condition of that support.

In closing

This article has named names. It has done so on the basis of public records, in language that mirrors the framing those records support, with sources cited at every claim.

I want to be clear about the spirit in which it is written.

The families profiled here are not, individually, the cause of Pakistan's electricity crisis. The cause is a system that allowed forty families to occupy positions where they receive guaranteed dollar-indexed returns from contracts most Pakistanis had no voice in approving. Within that system, individual family members have made the rational economic decisions any well-advised investor would make. They have signed favourable contracts. They have defended those contracts in arbitration. They have used their political access to protect their commercial interests. None of this is, in itself, illegal.

The criticism is not that these families behaved badly within a bad system. The criticism is that the system itself has allowed wealth and political access to compound, across thirty years, in ways that have hollowed out Pakistani industry, doubled household electricity bills, and produced one of the world's fastest-growing rooftop solar markets out of pure economic desperation.

Reforming the system requires confronting the families' commercial interests. The families' commercial interests are protected by political networks that span every major Pakistani political party. Confronting them requires the kind of political coherence that no Pakistani government has demonstrated in thirty years.

That coherence will only emerge when enough Pakistani citizens know what is being done in their name and demand that it stop. Information is the first step. Pressure is the second. Patience combined with insistence is the third.

This article is one contribution to the first step. There will need to be many more.

The forty families, individually, are not the enemy. The system that protects their disproportionate benefit at the expense of two hundred and forty million Pakistanis is. That system was built by specific decisions, in specific moments, by specific people. It can be unbuilt the same way.

But only if we know who built it, who benefits from it, and who is currently protecting it.

Now you know.

Thank you for reading. Forward this article to ten Pakistanis who pay an electricity bill. Discuss it. Argue with parts of it. Make people think.

WHAT TO DO TONIGHT

Pick three of the family names in this article that were unfamiliar to you before you read it. Search them online. Cross-check what I have written against the sources I have cited. Form your own judgement. The goal is not to take my word for any of this. The goal is to develop your own informed opinion based on primary sources, and to refuse to be deceived by official narratives that present these families as victims of "anti-business" sentiment when in fact they are beneficiaries of one of the largest legal wealth transfers in modern Pakistani history.

, Asad Baig, Lahore, April 2026

Frequently asked questions

Who are the 40 families that own Pakistan's IPPs? Approximately forty Pakistani business families collectively own most of the country's privately held independent power producers. The most significant include the Mansha (Nishat) group, the Dawood / Engro complex, the Sharif family (through Chiniot Power), Nadeem Babar (Orient and Saba), the Saifullah family of KPK (Saif Power), the Tareen group (JDW bagasse), the Sapphire Group, the Atlas Group, the Habibullah Group, the Saigol family, and the Habib family, among approximately thirty more.

Who owns HUBCO? HUBCO is controlled by the Dawood Group, which acquired it from National Power International Holdings in 2012. The Dawood Group, through Hub Power and associated companies (Engro, ThalNova), is now Pakistan's largest private power producer.

Who owns Nishat Power? Nishat Power and the related Lalpir, Pakgen, and Nishat Chunian power plants are owned by the Mansha family / Nishat Group. The combined capacity of the four plants is 1,127 MW. Estimated capacity payments in FY2023-24: Rs. 60-80 billion.

Who is Nadeem Babar? Nadeem Babar is a Pakistani investment banker and power sector entrepreneur. He founded Orient Power Company in 2003 and Saba Power, and acquired Oursun Solar. He served as Chairman of the Energy Reforms Task Force and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Petroleum under the Imran Khan government (2018-2020). He was named as a direct beneficiary of IPP payments in the 2020 Power Sector Inquiry Report.

What is the Oursun Solar tariff scandal? Oursun Solar, owned by Nadeem Babar, obtained a tariff of approximately 132 US cents per unit at a time when global solar tariffs in competitive auctions were 3 to 4 cents, approximately 33 times the international rate. The tariff was approved while Babar was simultaneously serving on Pakistani government advisory positions related to energy policy.

Who is Suleman Shehbaz? Suleman Shehbaz is the son of Pakistan's current Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif. He is officially a proclaimed offender in a Rs. 16 billion FIA money-laundering case filed in November 2020. He has lived in London since 2018. He owns Chiniot Power Limited, a 62 MW bagasse-based IPP that continues to receive capacity payments from the Pakistani state.

Why does NAB never convict the powerful in IPP cases? The 2018 NAB list of 71 politicians and bureaucrats under investigation included multiple individuals with clear power-sector connections. Almost none of the cases resulted in convictions or the recovery of significant sums. The structure of accountability in Pakistan, when it comes to powerful interests, is designed to fail, a pattern documented across decades and across multiple political administrations.

What can I do about the 40 families? The structural reform of the IPP system cannot be done by individual citizens. It requires collective political action: publishing the 2020 inquiry report, conducting forensic audits, pursuing legal recovery of excess profits, publishing full ownership records, and making energy reform a condition of political support across every party.

Sources and notes

Every claim in this article is drawn from publicly available material. Primary sources include:

• Power Sector Inquiry Report 2020, Government of Pakistan, committee headed by Muhammad Ali, former SECP Chairman (ARY News mirror)

• NEPRA tariff filings and licensing records (nepra.org.pk)

• CPPA-G IPP lists (cppa.gov.pk)

• Dawn, Most of IPPs owned by 40 Pakistani families, groups (22 July 2024)

• The Nation, Most of IPPs owned by 40 Pakistani families, groups (22 July 2024)

• Dawn, Money laundering case: Court orders NBP to attach 13 more accounts of Suleman's firms (11 September 2022)

• The Express Tribune, Shehbaz, Hamza acquitted in corruption reference (7 February 2025)

• The News, Appointment of new special assistant on petroleum triggers controversy (21 April 2019)

• Pakistan Today / Profit, Energy task force chairman allegedly owes Rs. 800m to SNGPL (14 January 2019)

• FIA challan against Sharif family members (November 2020)

• NAB list of 71 politicians and bureaucrats (October 2018)

• Times of Islamabad, Mian Mansha's Nishat Power taking highest ever profits of 32% while all other IPPs take 17% profit (15 January 2019)

• OCCRP, Pakistani PM and Son Acquitted From Money Laundering Case

• Karachi Stock Exchange / PSX disclosures of listed IPP operators

• Companies' own published biographies (Hussain Dawood, multiple sources; Nadeem Babar, published biographical statements)

A complete source list is in the books The People's Bill and My Position.

Related reading from Asad Baig

The other pillars

• My Position on Pakistan's IPP System: The Trillion-Rupee Trap, the moral case

• The Complete Guide to Pakistan's Electricity Crisis (1994 → 2026), the timeline

• Capacity Payments in Pakistan: Why Your Bill Is So High, the mechanism

• Should You Install Solar in Pakistan in 2026?, the practical decision

Tier 2 deep-dives, the family profiles

• The Mansha Empire: From the MCB Bank Sale to Lalpir Power

• The Dawood Story: HUBCO, Engro, and the Thar Coal Plants

• Nadeem Babar: The Architect Inside, and the Oursun Solar Tariff

• Why Does a Fugitive's Power Plant Still Get Paid by the Pakistani State?

Tier 3, long-tail explainers

• Who Owns HUBCO? The Dawood Group's Power Empire

• Who Owns Nishat Power? Inside the Mansha Group

• The Oursun Solar Tariff Scandal: 132 Cents per Unit, Explained

• List of CPEC Coal Power Plants in Pakistan

• The 2018 NAB List: 71 Politicians and Bureaucrats with Power Sector Links