Ex-Ohio deputy treasurer: Forgery case registered against American fugitive

Ahmad had a fake birth certificate issued by the same network that issued Time Square bomber’s documents.

LAHORE:

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) registered another case against runaway US national Amer Ahmad – the former Ohio deputy treasurer – on the charges of preparing a fake Pakistani National Identity Card (NIC) from Chakwal in 1998, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Ahmed’s Pakistani birth certificate is also spurious, according to record obtained by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).

An American national of Pakistani descent, 39-year-old Ahmad is on the run after a US district court judge issued his arrest warrant on Friday for violating the terms of his release after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery charges for his role in setting up his high school classmate to make $3.2 million in trading commissions off the state in exchange for $523,000 in kickbacks.

Ahmad is in the custody of the FIA after he was caught at Lahore’s Allama Iqbal Airport for travelling on forged documents from Mexico.

He had tried to mislead the FIA investigators by saying he was born in Pakistan and was a resident of Samanabad, Lahore, who immigrated to the US with his parents when he was just two years old. However, Ahmad’s birth certificate issued by the Ohio Department of Health contradicted his claim.

On Monday, Ahmad was presented before the Judicial Magistrate court and was sent to another one-day physical remand.

FIA Punjab Director Dr Usman Anwar told The Express Tribune that another case has been registered against Ahmad as well as the officials concerned of the then Chakwal registration office have been charged under sections 30 of the NADRA Ordinance, 34 of the Pakistan Penal Code and sections 5(2) 47 of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

After further interrogation, he revealed that in 1997, he visited Pakistan and obtained a manual NIC from the registration office of Chakwal, but the date shows that this card was issued in 1998, which again refutes his statement.

Moreover, according to NADRA’s record, his parents were residents of Karachi that raises the question of how could Ahmad get an NIC and birth certificate from Punjab when his parents were from Sindh.

FIA officials told The Express Tribune that Ahmad received ‘his’ NIC and birth certificate from an agent, F, who received an amount of $275 as bribe. The authorities went through Ahmad’s email via his laptop and saw that the fugitive had contacted F after finding him through a website. F, even after knowing all the facts about him, provided a fake Pakistani birth certificate to him via email within 24 hours after receiving an amount of $275 through Western Union.

F belongs to the network of people who had also issued, in May 2010, a fake birth certificate to Faisal Shehzad, who was arrested in the US for an attempted attack on New York’s Times Square, according to officials.

Such a group of people had worked for the birth certificate issuance branch of the City District Government Lahore (CDGL), which was suddenly closed and law enforcers had sealed all of its record for issuing Shehzad’s certificate.

However, later, an influential government official as well as an agent of this international illegal network escaped legal action.

The FIA Punjab director claimed that the accused involved in this racket have almost been identified and will be arrested shortly. Authorities have been conducting raids on suspected places.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 6^th, 2014.