Effective strikes: Absence of local police led to success in K-P, says FIA

Agency claims raids were unsuccessful as certain police officials leaked information

PESHAWAR: After being lauded for catching illegal transactions worth Rs9.07 million, recovering Rs85.46 million and confiscating another 3.8 kilogrammes of gold worth Rs28 million in six major raids throughout 2019, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has claimed that the operations turned out to be successful because the local police were not informed of the raids beforehand.

Per sources, FIA officials opine that the local police has allegedly been involved in leaking information whenever they were intimated about upcoming raids, as a result of which culprits easily escaped.

With growing pressure from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the FIA has changed its policy and has decided to keep the local police in the dark during high-value raids. As a result, the agency has started carrying out unprecedented strikes against money launderers and organisations involved in the funding of terrorist activities.

Sharing details of FIA’s high-value targets during 2019, agency officials privy to the change in policy said that in the past, it had always been the local police accompanying FIA officials during raids who would leak information to assist criminals.

“The police have nothing to do with illegal businesses including Hundi – a form of remittance instrument to transfer money from one place to another. It is the FIA’s job to take the criminals to task,” a senior FIA official, who requested anonymity, said. “Whenever the agency sought the assistance of the police in carrying out raids, our efforts went in vain.”

Recently, however, when the FIA set out to hunt down people and groups involved in illegal businesses, including Hundi and Hawala, it successfully arrested 22 people and recovered a sum of Rs158.18 million during 55 different raids carried out across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).

Per the data available with The Express Tribune, FIA officials detected transactions worth Rs9.07 million on January 29, 2019, and a case of money laundering was registered against Fazeel Khan, the son of a drug dealer Haji Khan Afridi. Officials said that Fazeel was the beneficiary of some 35 Benami accounts, adding that nine accused persons were arrested in the case, while others are still at large.

In another major raid that took place on April 6, 2019, the FIA arrested two persons and recovered Rs12 million from them, including Rs6.4 million in the form of different foreign currencies. A case was registered under different sections of the Foreign Exchange Regulations (FER).

Akin to that, on April 15, another successful raid was conducted by the agency where one person was arrested and Rs38.29 million were recovered from his possession, including Rs15.359 million and Saudi Riyal 0.55million. After the arrest of the culprit, cases were registered against him under the FER as well as the anti-money laundering (AML) laws.

Likewise, Rs10 million were recovered and four persons were arrested during a raid on June 15, 2019, in which FIA officials also confiscated 3,820 of Sri Lankan rupees. On August 1, 2019, Rs24.85 million were recovered from another party in the form of Rs11.3 million, SR0.53 million, AED19,400, USD40, DGP40, QR6,716, CNY2,035, RM2,718, SGD21, OMR131 and five Turkish Lira.

Apart from recovering money, on October 22, 2019, FIA officials carried out another successful raid without the assistance of the local police and confiscated 3.8 kilograms of gold worth Rs28 million. The strike was carried out near the Pakistan-Afghan border of Torkham. Accordingly, a case was registered against the culprits under the FER.

According to FIA officials, a huge number of people were involved in Hundi and Hawala businesses with the majority of them residing in Peshawar, Swat, Bannu, Dir and Buner.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 13^th, 2020.