KARACHI – The inquiry report into the acquittal of eight suspects in Khanani and Kalia money laundering case was sent to Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudry on Monday. Earlier, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah had presented the sealed report to Sindh High Court (SHC) Chief Justice Musheer Alam. The SHC chief justice had initiated a probe on the directive of CJP, who took suo motu notice of the comments from Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Director General Waseem Ahmed regarding the acquittal of the eight alleged accused involved in illegal transfer of money out of the country.
Alam had assigned Justice Shah to conduct an inquiry into the said matter and study the detailed records of the case and submit his report. The FIA director general, while appearing before the Senate’s Standing Committee on Interior, had alleged that a large sum of money was used for the release of the alleged accused as there was enough proof of their involvement in money laundering. On March 12, Ahmed had recorded his statement for the inquiry before Justice Shah.
On March 4, a special banking court had exonerated four foreign exchange dealers and as many bank officials from charges of falsification of bank accounts for the purpose of money laundering. Four forex dealers – Abdul Munaf Kalia, his brother Hanif Kalia, Javed Khanani and Atif Polani – were accused of opening bogus bank accounts with the help of Masood Abbas, Syed Wajahat Ali, Tasleem Ahmed and Arifur Rehman and using them for alleged unlawful transfer of billions of dollars abroad.
