LAHORE:
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has started investigations into the workings of a financial trading company that allegedly defrauded its clients of billions of rupees of investments.
NAB has received some 50 complaints about YS Securities and Services Private Limited, which has branches in Lahore, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Sargodha, Multan and Sahiwal and was registered with both the Lahore and Karachi Stock Exchanges, sources in the bureau told The Express Tribune.
The sources said that the company’s directors – brothers Gulfam, Gulsham and Farooq Khan – also ran a business in Lahore and other cities in Punjab for the sale and purchase of gold through the Commodities Exchange Company.
The scandal first came to light when some 20 investors approached the Model Town police station and lodged two cases against the directors and employees of the company under Sections 406 (breach of trust), 420 (cheating someone of property), 468 and 471 (both relating to forgery) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and Sections 3 and 4 of the Anti Money Laundering Act.
Sources in the Lahore Stock Exchange said that the directors of the company had sealed their offices and taken away their computer systems, main server and record on April 6.
Sikandar Iqbal Khan, a complainant in the FIR, told The Express Tribune that the company’s offices and the directors’ residences were locked. He said that he had spoken to their relatives and aides and had been told that they had fled with their families to Malaysia.
Sources said that the accused had shifted the money they allegedly misappropriated abroad, particularly to accounts in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. They said that they had thousands of clients, included about 1,500 account holders from Gujranwala alone.
The company promised big returns on investments and traded shares of banks, national and multinational companies and gold, the sources said. Khan said that the company had not deposited its investors’ shares in the Central Depository Company, as it was supposed to. It would send its clients fake receipts and account statements, he said.
Two weeks ago, he said, the company had stopped making payments. When some clients got suspicious and tried to reach them, they found their offices and the homes of the company’s directors deserted.
A NAB official said that some 50 investors had approached the bureau and submitted applications of complaint along with copies of their ID cards and documentary evidence of their investments.
Model Town DSP Abdul Qayum Gondal said though the police had registered cases, they would leave the matter to NAB as financial fraud was its exclusive domain.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 13th, 2012.
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Oh!! Please save the money and this jaundiced exercise. We have heard too much and I don't want you to push me over the edge.