TDAP scandal: FIA investigators to quiz Amin Fahim on March 24

Asked to explain financial defalcations during his stint as trade minister.

KARACHI:

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has issued notice to Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the main accused in the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) corruption scandal, asking him to appear before investigators on March 24.

Fahim has been asked to explain all his financial and administrative defalcations during his stint as federal trade minister.

Sources see it as a major development in the case involving illegal freight subsidy of Rs5 billion given to phoney export companies. A year ago, FIA officials had opened the investigation into the financial misappropriations, during the tenure of the previous government.

The probe has revealed the involvement of forged export companies, their owners, brokers and bureaucrats in the case. The investigations also exposed the high-level political and government patronage in the graft scandal.

FIA, while registering more than 65 cases, has arrested the owners of these phoney companies and also taken into custody many bureaucrats, including two former TDAP chiefs. Money laundering cases have also been registered against bankers and front-men of political personalities — who were involved in transferring abroad heavy sums of money through illegal channels.

Now, as investigations have entered the final stages, the FIA Crime Circle has decided to bring the politicians, allegedly involved in looting the national exchequer, before the courts and thus Amin Fahim is sent a notice under Article 160.

He is being informed that the embezzled Rs5 billion were sanctioned by a committee of the Export Development Fund run under his chairmanship.

Fahim will also be questioned about payments made to 65 phoney companies that were authorised by Farhan Ahmed Junejo, who was appointed in the ministry of trade on special recommendation by Amin Fahim. Junejo did not receive a salary during his tenure at the ministry.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 18^th, 2014.