Skip to main content

Zardari Group got Rs30m of Rs4.4bn suspicious transactions, IHC told

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) informed the Islamabad High Court on Thursday that out of Rs4.4 billion suspicious transactions through a fictitious bank account, the company owned by former president Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur received only Rs30 million.

NAB investigation officer Mohammad Ali Abro, who is probing the fake bank accounts case, told a two-judge IHC bench comprising Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had registered an FIR in the case in which Mr Zardari and his sister were also entangled at a later stage. The FIR was based on the suspicious transactions of Rs4.4bn, he added.

He said the account titled M/s A One International was fake and it received a sum of Rs4.4bn out of which Rs30m was paid to the Zardari Group at two different times. When the court asked the investigation officer if there was any evidence that showed the amount was proceeds of crime, he said it was being investigated.

Mr Abro said another company Park Lane Private Limited owned by the former president also received a huge amount from the same account. NAB has filed a separate reference in this case as well.

Court extends interim bail of ex-president, sister in fake bank accounts case

When Justice Kayani asked why NAB had filed multiple references when these could be filed as a single case, NAB’s Additional Prosecutor General Jahanzeb Bharwana said the Supreme Court had directed the anti-graft watchdog to file multiple references.

During the hearing, the IHC bench extended the interim bail of Mr Zardari and Ms Talpur, as well as some other accused persons.

Mr Bharwana informed the court that there was nothing against Khawaja Nimar Majeed and three officials of the Summit Bank and NAB was not going to arrest them in the fake accounts case. Subsequently, the IHC disposed of their petitions.

Giving some details of the fake accounts case, Mr Bahrwana said the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) under the directive of the Supreme Court had traced 28 fake accounts where the ostensible account holders disassociated themselves from the accounts. He said the FIA initially registered the FIR in the fake accounts case under various sections of the Pakistan Penal Code, Prevention of Corruption Act and Anti Money Laundering Act. A challan was submitted to a banking court in Karachi, whereas the NAB chairman in the light of the SC directive transferred these cases to an accountability court of Islamabad.

Naek’s press conference

Farooq H. Naek, the counsel for Mr Zardari and Ms Talpur, claimed at a press conference that the former president had nothing to do with the references filed by NAB because he was a minority shareholder in the Zardari Group. He said the Zardari Group was a private firm that received Rs30m from a bank account.

According to Mr Naek, this amount was paid by sugar mills owned by the Omni Group for sugarcane crops of Mr Zardari and his sister.

He said the case was originally registered with the Karachi FIA and tried in the banking court from where it was transferred to the Rawalpindi NAB. Mr Zardari had challenged the transfer of the case and the matter was pending before the Supreme Court, he added.

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2019



from The Dawn News - Home http://bit.ly/2QCrdIR
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sir Anwer Pervez, richest Pakistani British businessman, loses £432m in pandemic

Sir Anwar Pervez OBE, the founder and chairman of Bestway Cash & Carry has lost £432 million during the coronavirus pandemic to bring him down to No 50 on the richest British people list. The list has 1,000 people and is published by the Sunday Times newspaper . Pervez was at No 42 previously.  The 2020 list of the UK’s richest shows its first fall in wealth in a decade as Britain’s wealthiest people lost tens of billions of pounds in the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Times reported in its Rich List 2020. The newspaper, which has produced the respected annual ranking of the country’s 1,000 wealthiest people since 1989, found the past two months had resulted in the super-rich losing £54 billion ($65 billion). More than half of the billionaires in Britain had seen drops in their worth by as much as £6b, a decrease in their collective wealth unprecedented since 2009 and the financial crisis. The Hinduja brothers, who topped last year’s list with a £22b fortune, saw among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Despite reservations about jury, Pakistan to implement FATF reforms: envoy

WASHINGTON: Despite its reservations about the fairness of the jury which is to determine Pakistan’s performance against terror financing, the government is committed to implementing its action plan for dealing with this issue, says Islamabad’s Washington envoy Asad Majeed Khan. In a conversation with a prominent US scholar George Perkovich, recorded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Monday afternoon, Ambassador Khan said the actions that Pakistan had taken so far to eliminate terror financing were “reflective of the political will”. “We feel that we have done a lot. We are also clear and determined to do more,” said the envoy while responding to a question about a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held in Orlando last week, which asked Pakistan to implement its own action plan for eliminating terror financing by October. Failing to do so could put Pakistan on a blacklist of violators and bring strict economic sanctions too. “But we w...
Post a Comment
Read more