Export subsidy scandal: FIA likely to implicate senior PPP leaders

The agency is expected to issue notices to ex-PM Gilani and Fahim.

KARACHI: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has decided to cast the net of its investigations wider to include the former premier Yousaf Raza Gilani and top Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim in light of evidences emerging in connection with the multi-billion-rupee Trade Develop­ment Authority (TDAP) export subsidy scandal.

The FIA authorities are also contemplating the legal aspects of the matter and it is likely that the two politicians will be issued notices soon.

The TDAP had released billions of rupees to export companies during the tenure of the previous government under freight and other subsidy schemes in the garb of promoting export of Pakistani products. During preliminary investigations by the FIA Crime Circle Karachi, it emerged that most of the subsidy amount was given out to phony export companies and important political personalities, high government officials, and middlemen.

The FIA has registered 50 cases involving Rs5 billion paid to phony companies. The agency has also arrested two former heads of the TDAP Tariq Iqbal Puri and Abid Javed Akbar along with many other high officials, auditors, bankers and owners of companies. Most of the cash given to these fake export companies had been shifted abroad through hawala or hundi.

With probe into the final stage, the investigators are now focusing on important politicians, who allegedly patronised the misappropriation.

According to the findings of investigation, the commerce minister in the previous government Makhdoom Amin Faheem expressed his desire that the services of a Farhan Junejo – an 18 grade officer in the Sindh government, who had been issued a show-cause notice for job termination by the provincial government – be transferred to the federal government.

Junejo did not wait to complete the legal requirements and started work in the office of the minister without any salary. The TDAP approved claims of fake trade subsidy on the recommendations of Junejo in the meetings of the Export Development Fund (EDF) without completing the necessary paperwork and legal requirements.

The main accused of the financial scandal Haroon Raisani and Mian Muhammad Tariq – the owners of the Punjatan Associates – shifted the graft money into the accounts of Farhan Junejo. Faisal Siddique Khan, a trusted front man of the then prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, also allegedly continued receiving the prime minister’s share of the misappropriated money.

Later when the new team of the federal minister expressed their mistrust on Faisal Siddique Khan, a trader from Multan Ghulam Abbas, who enjoyed the trust of the prime minister, was chosen to represent Gilani.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2013.