By Staff Reporter
Islamabad: Ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan and other senior leaders of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party were booked by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Tuesday for allegedly receiving prohibited funding from abroad.
The case was filed by the state through FIA’s Corporate Banking Circle in Islamabad.
A first information report (FIR) in the case said Arif Masood Naqvi — the owner of the Wooton Cricket Limited — transferred ‘ill-gotten’ money to an account of United Bank Limited (UBL) registered under the name of the Khan’s party.
The complaint named Imran Khan, Sardar Azhar Tariq Khan, Saifullah Khan Nyazee, Syed Yunus Ali Raza, Aamer Mehmood Kiani, Tariq Rahim Sheikh, Tariq Shafi, Faisal Maqbool Shaikh, Hamid Zaman and Manzoor Ahmad Chaudhary as signatories/beneficiaries of the party’s account in question.
“The purpose stated in the swift messages of the transactions is ‘agreed transfer’ to disguise the true nature, origin, location, movement and ownership of these funds.”
FIA has alleged that Naqvi’s Abraaj Group had transferred $210,000 to the PTI account in Islamabad. The party also received more financing from two bank accounts of Wotan Cricket Club.
It added that there were 12 currency transaction reports and suspicious transaction reports that had to be reported by the bank officials to the concerned authorities, but they failed to do so.
According to the FIR, leaders of the party had violated the Foreign Exchange Act and they were declared as beneficiaries of suspicious bank accounts.
“PTI submitted an affidavit of Arif Masood Naqvi before the Election Commission of Pakistan stating therein that all the amounts collected in the accounts of WCL were submitted into PTI’s account in Pakistan. This affidavit has been proved to be false/forged as two more transactions were also made from WCL to two different accounts in Pakistan in May 2013.”
Last month, the Election Commission in its verdict in the prohibited funding case against PTI stated that the party did indeed receive such funding.
Notably, Akbar S Babar, the man who blew the lid off the scam involving the inflow of dubious foreign funds into Khan’s political outfit PTI, formally approached the FIA to initiate a probe against the PTI.
Babar told the FIA that the PTI’s financial board in 2011 illegally authorised four employees of the party’s central secretariat to collect donations in their personal accounts from within Pakistan and abroad.
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