KARACHI: Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has sought more time for filing a reply on a petition filed by Omni Group Chairman Anwar Majeed, who is currently under an arrest in the money laundering scandal.
Sindh High Court (SHC) took up the plea filed by Anwar Majeed against FIA for hearing on Tuesday.
During the course of the hearing, FIA sought time from the court for filing reply upon which court has summoned investigation officer Najaf Mirza on November 20.
Anwar Majeed took the plea that bogus cases are being registered against him by FIA, therefore, the court should stop FIA from harassing him. Details of the cases should also be told.
Petitioner further prayed court it should seek details of pending inquiry against him from FIA.
On the other hand, FIA officials said 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.
FIA officials claimed that fake accounts were opened by bank managers on order of administration and administration opened these bogus accounts on order of Omni Group.
They said all these accounts were opened for 6 to 10 months from 2013 to 2015 to do money laundering.
Officials claimed that according to available documents, the amount of money that had been laundered was Rs 35 billion.
FIA Sindh director ordered an inquiry on the report of 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.
