KARACHI - The Sindh High Court on Tuesday gave another chance to the federal government for submitting a reply on a petition filed by Omni Group Chairman Anwar Majeed, close aide of former president Asif Ali Zardari, February 7.
A SHC bench conducted hearing on a petition filed by Anwar Majeed, nominated in Rs 41 billion money laundering case, seeking order to restrain FIA from allegedly harassing him.
Additional attorney general appeared in the court and requested to grant him further time for filing a reply.
The bench allowed the AAG plea and directed him to make sure to file the reply in the next hearing.
In his petition, Majeed alleged that the Federal Investigation Agency was harassing him and requested the court to restrain the agency from doing so.
The petitioner also pleaded the court to issue direction to the FIA to provide details of the inquiries if conducted against him or his company. Mr Majeed submitted that ‘false’ inquiries have been initiated against him and cases are being registered against him by FIA, therefore, the FIA should be restrained from harassing him.
In the earlier hearing, the FIA officials submitted that money laundering case was raised by the State Bank of Pakistan in 2015 for the first time when it had sent the report of suspicious remittances (STRs) to FIA.
According to the FIA prosecution, fake accounts were opened by bank managers on order of administration and administration opened these bogus accounts on order of Omni Group. All these accounts were opened for 6 to 10 months from 2013 to 2015 to do money laundering.
While providing detail of the case, the FIA claimed to have obtained documents which has proven that amount of money that had been laundered was Rs 35 billion. On the bases of the available documents, the higher authority of the FIA an inquiry was initiated regarding suspicious remittances and on March 2015, four bank accounts were found involved in dubious remittances.According to FIA officials, all bank accounts were of Omni Group.
In an inquiry, recommendations were made to register a case but due to an alleged pressure, no case had been registered at that time and inquiry was halted.
In December 2017, the State Bank of Pakistan once again sent STRs. In this report, there were 29 accounts that were found involved in suspicious remittances out of them, 16 accounts were of Summit Bank, 8 of Sindh Bank, and 5 of UBL.
Four accounts through which remittances were sent in 2015 were also included in these 29 accounts.
Anwar and his son were arrested on August 15 in connection to a case pertaining to money laundering through fake bank accounts. The father-son duo is currently in jail on judicial remand.
The FIA is interrogating 32 people in relation to money laundering from fake accounts, including Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur. Zardari’s close aide Hussain Lawai was arrested in July this year in connection with the probe.
The FIA prosecution stated that more than 20 ‘benami’ accounts at some private banks were opened in 2013, 2014 and 2015 from where transactions worth billions of rupees were made, according to sources. The amount, according to FIA sources, was said to be black money gathered from various kickbacks, commissions and bribes.
Previously, the amount laundered from these fictitious accounts was said to be Rs32 billion, however, FIA officials said late last month they had found at least 15 more suspicious bank accounts, four of which were confirmed as fake.
A total of Rs 6 billion were laundered via these four fake or ‘benami’ accounts. After the disclosure, the total amount of money laundered via fake bank accounts climbed to Rs 41 billion.