NAB Recovers Over Rs 2.2 Bln Deceived Money From Illegal Modarba Companies:Senate Body Told

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has so far recovered an amount of over Rs 2.2 billion, including Rs 644.87 million in cash and assets worth Rs 1,646 million that were deceitfully taken by illegal Modarba companies from people in disguise of providing profit instead of interest

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Oct, 2017 ) :The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has so far recovered an amount of over Rs 2.2 billion, including Rs 644.87 million in cash and assets worth Rs 1,646 million that were deceitfully taken by illegal Modarba companies from people in disguise of providing profit instead of interest.

The Bureau also identified a property worth Rs 4 billion that was made out of the money gotten through deceitfu ways, however, the matter in that regard was in litigation, the NAB Director Investigations informed the Senate Committee on Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs and Narcotics Control.

The meeting of the committee was chaired by Senator Saleem Mandviwalla while among others it was attended by senators Kamil Ali Agha, Saud Majeed, Mohsin Aziz and Ilyas Ahmad Bilour. The NAB official informed the committee that as many as 45 accused had been arrested while some were still at large.

He informed the committee that as many as 3,1477 people were looted by the illegal Modarba companies involving claims of Rs 22 billion, adding that the Bureau had unearthed 29 groups that were involved in the scam.

He said most of the cases were related to twin cities of Islamabad-Rawalpind, some to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and a few to other parts of the country. In total, the affected people had lodged about Rs 22 billion amount claims, which included the profit amount calculated with the principal amount.

The principal amount might be around Rs 14 billion that was taken by these fraudulent companies, he added. Meanwhile, a State Bank of Pakistan representative informed the committee that the financial fraud related to Abandoned Properties Organization (APO) was actually amounted to Rs 1.925 billion, in which officials from APO, National Bank of Pakistan and Habib Bank were involved.

However, a representative of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) told the committee that the financial fraud could be traced back to 2012, in which an official from the First Women Bank was also involved.

Eight officials involved in the fraud were arrested, out of them seven were on bail and one was in jail. He also sought the committee's help in approaching the Deputy Commissioner Okara for transfer of assets, including 42 acres of land in Depalpur.

Meanwhile, a Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan official informed the committee that investigation into alleged corruption of $17.5 million in the Multan Metro Bus project would likely to be completed by December end.

The committee was informed that China had already completed its probe in the case, which had not yet been shared. The SECP was in contact with the Chinese authorities and as and when any information was received, that would be shared with the committee, the official said.

On the issue of Bank of Punjab (BoP) shares manipulation, he said that the SECP had been collecting information from all the stakeholders to prepare a detailed report to ascertain whether there was actually any manipulation or not.

On the occasion, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) informed the committee that it had initiated audit of all the four telecommunication companies operating in the country. Three out of four cellurlar companies had already submitted their data while zong would send its data within a couple of days, it added.

The FBR team also shared some figures of Telenor company with the committee saying that it had 40 million customers and had made 98.064 million transactions during the month of July. The FBR officials agreed with the suggestion given by the committee chairman that the board should outsource audit of the cellular companies as it currently did not have capacity to do the same.

It was agreed that provinces should be taken on board on the issue before taking any decision. The committee also expressed concern over the FBR's move of imposing new regulatory duty on more than 700 import items.