P.V. Abdul Wahab is no stranger to controversies and knows how to tackle them when he gets into one. So now, the NRI businessman and Muslim League MP, who was ordered out of a Dubai-bound Indian flight at Kozhikode two days ago after he allegedly held up the aircraft, has vowed to haul the pilot to the privileges committee of Parliament.

Fifty six-year-old Wahab is one of the country’s wealthiest MPs. Going by the affidavit he submitted to the Election Commission before his nomination to the Rajya Sabha in 2004, Wahab owns a Rs 136-crore business network that stretches all the way from Kerala to the Gulf countries, to even Australia.

Wahab, who hailed from a poor Nilambur family, began his career in Dubai in 1974 as a storekeeper’s assistant, before turning into a small-time local trader of auto spare parts and garage equipment. Some 25 years later, Wahab now presides over the Bridgeway group, a multi-crore business network with a big presence in almost all major Gulf cities. Wahab’s international businesses run the whole gamut from shipping and freight forwarding to oil drilling equipment, global trading, real estate and civil construction, health care and education.

His Indian business empire, the Peevees Group—named after his initials—is into automobile dealerships, real estate and property development, textile and garment manufacturing, education and more. He was also on the board of the public sector Kerala Minerals and Metals Ltd and Travancore Cements Limited, besides the Malabar Institute of Medical Sciences, one of Kerala’s largest multi-speciality corporate hospitals.

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