Axact-gate hearing: Witness statements supplied to counsel for the accused

Magistrate directed to visit premises and supervise the investigators in forensic examination

KARACHI: The district and sessions court hearing the Axact-gate scandal on Monday supplied copies of witness statements to the lawyers representing the nine accused including company’s chief executive officer Shoaib Shaikh.

There are at least 79 witnesses, including Axact employees and the press owner whom the company hired for printing of alleged fake degrees, named in the supplementary challan submitted by the Federal Investigation Agency to court. So far statements of 54 witnesses have been documented.

The investigators moved an application before the South district judicial magistrate, Noor Muhammad Kalmati, for recording of the statements of the accused and some of the witnesses inside jail, on June 20, which he approved.

Meanwhile, the magistrate was directed by the district’s top judge, Ahmed Saba, to visit premises of the company and supervise the investigators in forensic examination of the computers there.

Suspects’ counsel, Naeem Qureshi, argued that the court should also allow a person from the defence side to accompany the investigators as millions of rupees theft was being made from there since the sealing of the firm.

The judge, however, turned down his plea observing that since it was an administrative order, he could not interfere with it. Qureshi was asked to move the top judge’s court if he wanted any such facility.

Besides the detention of nine top officials, company’s human resource department’s head was also remanded on Sunday for his alleged involvement in the scam.

The investigating team, headed by FIA Corporate Crime Circle Assistant Director Saeed Ahmed Memon, has been directed to submit final charge sheet of the case to the court by June 23.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 16^th, 2015.