9 employees of forex firm arrested

LAHORE-Civil Lines police unearthed another big financial scam of Rs 1.25 billion and arrested nine employees of a local money exchange company for their alleged involvement in the embezzlement of the money. The police sources said that the arrested persons were the executive members of the ZARCO Money Exchange Company located at Lawrence Road near The Mall. A police team headed by SHO Taimur Malik arrested the alleged accused when they were preparing to escape from the country. The police team also recovered passports and other travelling documents from their possession, the sources claimed. The arrested employees were accused of misappropriating Rs 1.25 billion from the company in connivance with three other employees who are still at large. The sources said that the police high-ups are making efforts to place their names on the ECL to stop their escape from the country. Police registered an FIR under sections 420,468,471,408/34 of PPC on the complaint of the ZARCO Exchange Companys Chief Executive Lakhte Husnain. He in the application alleged that his companys employees embezzled money of his company through 'dummy accounts. He said that police that a huge amount of the misappropriated money was remittances sent by hundreds of Pakistanis settled abroad but his companys employees embezzled the money instead of handing over it to the real owners. SHO Civil Lines Malik Taimur told The Nation that the police had arrested nine culprits nominated in the FIR for their involvement in the financial scandal of ZARCO Money Exchange. They are being interrogated by a team of expert police officers, he added. Modus operandi of the arrested employees was that they used to misappropriate money through fictitious consumers by showing their fake NICs being sent from abroad. He said that they had also misused the money sent by a Western company through ZARCO. He,however, said that FIR had been registered against the accused. The SHO said that a police team has been dispatched for the arrest of the other employees. It has been learnt reliably that several victims are still visiting the ZARCO Exchange Company to get their money sent by their relatives from abroad but due to unavailability of the staff concerned, they are retuning without payment.