Court freezes 20 accounts on FBR’s request

Accounts of accused in separate cases of money laundering, transfer of dollars have been frozen

KARACHI: The Customs court issued orders to freeze 20 different bank accounts in response to the plea filed by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) in three cases pertaining to transfer of US dollars out of the country, money laundering worth billions of rupees and benami accounts.

A case has been filed against a family of four for transferring dollars to the United States of America. According to the FBR, the accused, father Pervaiz Ali, his daughters Sara Ali, Anum Ali and son Jibran Ali, opened 11 accounts for money laundering in 2016. The family, which has dual nationality of USA and Pakistan, bought large quantities of dollars from different currency exchange outlets in Karachi. According to the FBR, the accused have transferred $4,094,500 to the USA up till now. The money was transferred via benami accounts from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2018.

The investigation officer informed the court about another case in which four traders have been accused of tax theft. According to the FBR the accused, Zor Talib Khan, Ammar Khan, Muhammad Hassan and Muhammad Hamza, committed tax theft of more than Rs1.26b over the course of five years.

Zor Talib Khan is the proprietor of Salar Khan Enterprises and Salar Mining. He opened six benami accounts between the years 2012 to 2017. The accused made transactions worth more than Rs8b during these five years. The benami accounts were used for businesses of paint shops, transporters, oil, spare parts, scrap and electronics.

The IO said that the FBR suspects that money could be withdrawn from the accounts with which transactions worth billions of rupees have been carried out. The bank accounts related to these cases should be frozen for the sake of national security.

The court ordered to freeze 20 different bank accounts for 30 days. These include eight benami accounts through which transactions of over Rs8b were made, 11 accounts used for transferring dollars, and the account of Muhammad Ibrahim who is a resident of Bhutto Colony.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 18^th, 2019.