ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court hearing a Rs35 billion fake accounts case was told on Monday that two witnesses to whom the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had issued summons for investigation had vanished.

A three-judge SC bench headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, however, issued notices to Inspector General of Sindh Police Kaleem Imam after senior counsel Sardar Muhammad Aslam requested the court to order the provincial police to recover the disappeared persons.

The chief justice asked what would police do if someone had disappeared on his own? “Let us ask from the IG Sindh whether they have disappeared on their own or someone has abducted them,” he said.

Justice Ijaz-ul-Ahsan asked if the provincial police could be of any help.

Mr Aslam is representing the family members of Mohammad Bashir and Abdul Jabbar — the two witnesses who have disappeared in a mysterious manner after they were summoned by the joint investigation team that is probing the fake accounts case.

Apex court has been requested to order Sindh police to recover the disappeared persons

The counsel later told Dawn that the manner in which the two witnesses were abducted was similar. He said that in both cases, armed men came in sports utility vehicles and forcibly abducted the two men. FIRs of the abductions had been lodged at the relevant police station, the counsel stated.

One of the witnesses disappeared on Oct 31 and the other within two or three days after it, he said.

At the last hearing on Oct 22, Additional Director General of FIA Ahsan Sadiq, who was appointed head of the JIT by the SC on Sept 6, furnished a second progress report highlighting that the Sindh government appeared reluctant and was not extending cooperation to the JIT in its probe into the fake accounts case.

The report had stated that the information being provided by the Sindh government was piecemeal and not complete, adding that around Rs54 billion was transferred from 36 different “Benami” companies of which transactions worth Rs47 billion through thousands of fake accounts had been identified.

During the hearing, the chief justice observed that criminal proceedings should be initiated in the case and ordered the authorities to produce Abdul Ghani of the Omni Group of Companies before the court with a directive that he be transferred from Sindh to Adiala jail in Rawalpindi since he was still issuing directives over the phone.

During the proceedings, the JIT furnished a report stating that nine sugar mills owned by the Omni Group availed financial facilities, including cash finance (CF) worth Rs13.5 billion approximately, from different banks against pledge of stocks (sugar bags).

The nine sugar mills are Ansari Sugar Mills Ltd, Bandhi Sugar Mills Ltd, Bawany Sugar Mills Ltd, Khoski Sugar Mills (Pvt) Ltd, Naudero Sugar Mills Ltd, New Dadu Sugar Mills Ltd, Chamber Sugar Mills (Pvt) Ltd, Larr Sugar Mills Ltd and Tando Allayar Mills (Pvt) Ltd.

The FIA report explained that records from the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and Omni Group were still to be collected and analysed.

The court, however, summoned senior officials of banks that claim to have loaned billions of rupees to the Omni Group to appear before it on Nov 17 in the SC’s Lahore Registry.

Nimr Majeed, son of Omni Group chairman Anwar Majeed, appeared before the court on Monday and expressed ignorance about the pilferage of stocks that were shown by the Omni Group against loans obtained from different banks.

Waqf property

In another case concerning allotment of Waqf property attached to the shrine of Hazrat Baba Farid-ud-Din Masud Ganj Shakar, Pakpattan Sharif, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif furnished his reply requesting the court to discharge the notice in the interest of justice.

Mr Sharif is facing charges that being the chief minister of Punjab in 1986 he ordered withdrawing a notification of Dec 17, 1969.

The reply states that it is a very old matter having taken place about 32 years ago and, therefore, does not recall having ever passed any such order of withdrawal purportedly attributed to him being the chief minister, Punjab, at the relevant time.

Quoting the record submitted by the Punjab government before the SC, the reply said the then Punjab chief minister did not order the withdrawal of the relevant notification of Dec 17, 1969.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2018