Bank official accused of Rs6m fraud at large

Three ‘borrowers’ arrested, another missing.

LAHORE:

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is searching for an Askari Bank official who fraudulently issued Rs6 million in loans. Three tenant farmers have been arrested for obtaining the loans, but they have told interrogators they had been conned by the bank officer.

Two cases pertaining to two accounts at Askari Bank have been registered at the FIA Commercial Banking Circle (CBC) police station in Lahore after FIA Assistant Director Sheikh Mumtaz carried out an initial inquiry.

The accused are Usman Safdar, an agriculture credit officer at Askari Bank’s Gujranwala branch, and tenant farmers Alamgir, Qamar Zaman, Khalid Hussain and Asmatullah. The latter three have been arrested and questioned by investigators.

FIA sources said that Zaman, Hussain and Asmatullah had said they had been conned by the bank officer and had not received any of the money they allegedly obtained.

They said Safdar had offered them two loans of Rs0.8 million for tractors on two accounts and instructed them to provide their ID cards for the paperwork.

Zaman said he had collected the others’ ID cards and provided them to Safdar.

The accused in custody said that the bank official had prepared fake revenue documents regarding cultivation of land and had tricked them into signing blank documents as well as stamp paper. They said that Safdar had never passed on to them the chequebooks for the two accounts.

They said they had been offered two loans of Rs0.8 million and they were not aware that Safdar had withdrawn Rs6 million. The Askari Bank management had asked the FIA to investigate after discovering the Rs6 million loss.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 3^rd, 2012.