Reacting to allegations levelled by AKD Group Chairman Aqeel Karim Dhedhi that he was influencing the investigations against the brokerage house, Fawad Hasan Fawad said on Tuesday that he had worked for the Jehangir Siddiqui group for three years and in his tenure as its director he had only acquired lease for a private land, a private news channel has reported.
Fawad said he was not in direct contact with FIA Sindh Director Shahid Hayat so how he could influence the investigation. He also denied that the PM’s Office was influencing the case in any way.
After the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Monday arrested two directors and the CEO of AKD Securities, Aqeel Dhedhi told a hurriedly-called press conference that the arrest of his three employees was a plot against him.
He alleged that Fawad Hassan Fawad and a former director of the FIA, Saud Mirza, were the other players in the plot against him. He said, “If the government wants to save the country’s stock exchange then it has to remove Jahangir Siddiqui’s aides, including Shahid Hayat from his post.”
In response to the accusations, a spokesperson for the Jehangir Siddiqui Group refuted all the charges levelled by Dhedhi as baseless, unjustified and mala fide. He denied that JS Group’s chairman or any official had anything to do with the FIA raid.
On Monday, the FIA took into custody Muhammad Farid Alam, CEO of AKD Securities, Tariq Adam Ghumra, Director and Head of Equity Operations AKD Securities, and Muhammad Iqbal, another director in the AKD Group, during a raid on AKD offices.
It may be mentioned that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had during the previous government started investigating the matters of the illegal construction of an upmarket housing scheme, Naya Nazimabad, on a valuable state land, the fraudulent property deal between Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) and the AKD Group, construction of an irregular multi-storeyed building Arkadians Towers and the Ogra corruption case against the AKD Group.