Minister’s forex firm gets deeper into trouble

ISLAMABAD: The multi-billion rupees forex scam involving the firm Malik Exchange, owned by Minister of State for Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas Senator Abdul Raziq (Fata), took a new turn on Thursday, when a Lahore court cancelled the bails of three of his absconding employees and ordered the FIA to arrest them.The bails of these three employees — Imtiaz Khan, Iqbal Afridi and Mian Waris Gul — were cancelled after they did not appear in the court despite repeated reminders sent to them. Even the lawyer of the accused did not appear in the court to plead for the confirmation of their pre-arrest bails.Police sources suspected that the accused might have fled to their native area of Darra Adamkhel.However, one of the accused of the Rs 30m bank fraud in the Dubai Bank — Shahzad Saqib Sulehriya — who too has been indirectly linked to the forex firm dealings, managed to get bail from the court on Thursday, while bail applications of his two accomplices, including a single mother of two children and Muhammad Tayyab, were rejected. The two are already incarcerated in the Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore.Meanwhile, an FIA official confirmed that the Malik Exchange had filed a petition in the Peshawar High Court against the ongoing investigations.Dealings of the last seven months of the Malik Exchange Private Limited were being investigated vigorously.Talking to The News, the state minister rejected the allegations about the possible involvement of his forex company in financing terrorism in the troubled areas. He said his family had been a victim of Talibanisation in his home province.“You know, my father, Malik Gul Khan, was seriously injured when a suicide bomber hit a Jirga of elders gathered to form an alliance against the Taliban. My close relatives have lost their lives in the recent terrorist attacks. So, how could we be involved in such kind of activities that are against the interests of our country,” he said.Earlier, it was reported that the Malik Exchange was facing investigation at the hands of the FIA for its alleged role in dubious money transfers from Lahore to the tribal areas after it was revealed that the company employees were maintaining about 22 secret bank accounts in nine major branches, located in Gulberg, Lahore.The minister lamented that such kind of impression was given in some media reports, as his company was the financier of the Taliban. It was shocking for him and his family, he said.The minister said when the FIA had raided the Malik Exchange, it had taken the whole record of its office in Lahore and now, despite the lapse of six months, they did not formally bring any serious charge against his company.Asked to comment on receipt of Rs 5 million, given to the three accused of a Rs 300 million fraud by his company employees to send the money to Dubai, he said this was only on a plain paper, and not any authorised receipt. “We usually issue a computerised receipt to our customers. So, this receipt is not valid in our accounts,” he argued.Asked to clarify his position with regard to the allegations of secret transfer of money from Lahore banks to the tribal areas, he said his company had been sending amounts to its own branches in Peshawar and vice versa. “We usually transfer extra money to other stations to help them meet their requirements,” he said.Raziq said it was not a crime to keep money in bank accounts or transfer them from one account to other within Pakistan, as it was very much legal. But when he was told that actually these 22 accounts were opened by his employees on fake documents, he argued that he would comment on those accounts only when the FIA formally asked about them.He said even those accounts were not in the name of Malik Exchange, but in the names of the employees, as claimed by the FIA. He said the Malik Exchange had already sacked one of the employees, while the two others were still on pre-arrest bail.