Qureshi to SC: I tried but it wasn’t easy

The Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) defiant officer, Zafar Qureshi, who retired on Friday, submitted his last interim progress report in the Rs 5 billion National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) scam with the Supreme Court complaining that he was not allowed to complete the investigation in the scam by the FIA director general and the interior secretary.
In his 100-page interim report submitted with the SC, Qureshi stated that FIA Director General Tehsin Anwar Shah and Interior Secretary Khwaja Siddique Akbar, in connivance with each other, unduly favoured and benefited the accused in the NICL scam. He said when he sought the original report carrying details of foreign accounts of Moonis Elahi from the director general, he was told that the report had been lost.
However, he said no action was taken against any official responsible for the missing report. He said FIA’s Lahore Director Waqar Haidar and Additional Director Legal Zulfiqar Ali benefited Moonis by de-freezing two of his accounts having an amount of Rs 20 million on fake letters. He said investigation in this regard had been completed and both the officials had been found involved. However, he said the FIA director general did not allow registration of cases against them.
According to the report, the Lahore High Court had ordered putting the names of Habibullah Warraich and his family on the exit control list (ECL), however, he was sent abroad from Karachi on September 6. The report stated that in 2007, Moonis and his Al-Tahoor Company possessed agricultural piece of land worth not more than Rs 0.5 million. However, in 2009, it had assets worth over Rs 700 million.
The report stated that fresh investigations into the charges of money laundering had been initiated against Moonis’ spouse by the Financial Monetary Unit as Rs 160 million had dubiously been transferred in her account from Dubai. The report said she was not even a taxpayer. It said the transactions took place during the period when the NICL scam was happening.