KARACHI: SHC seeks approved plan for repayment to victims: Alliance Motors scam
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, April 8: The Sindh High Court asked its official assignee on Tuesday to have his proposal for partial repayments to the 1989 Alliance Motors scam victims approved by the court-appointed joint liquidator and advisory committee of investors before submitting it to him.
Official assignee Bashir Memon filed a reference stipulating repayment of 25 per cent of the principal stuck-up amounts to investors. The repayments were proposed to be made to about 75 per cent of the investors as more than 20 per cent of the claims had been found to be bogus. Mr Memon made the reference as a joint liquidator and he proposed that the repayments be made by him and a National Accountability Bureau officer jointly.
About the other joint liquidator, Advocate Shafi Mohammadi, Mr Memon said he had stopped taking interest in the matter and the repayments be made as proposed by him.
Mr Mohammadi, who was present in the court, took exception to the remarks about him and the repayment scheme as a whole. He said he was never consulted on the reference by the official assignee, who was going it alone despite being one of the two joint liquidators. He said he also did not know who scrutinized the claims and declared more than 20 per cent of the claims bogus so as to disentitle the claimants to any relief now or in the future.
The lawyer liquidator recalled that victims of earlier scams had been paid through the court but the assignee’s repayment scheme kept the court out of its ambit. The assignee had done little to alleviate the victims’ sufferings since 1989 and had now dubbed “bogus” a large number of claims. Neither he nor the court nor the investors’ advisory committee had been involved in the process. NAB had done nothing to bring the culprits to book or make them pay up the outstanding amounts.
Justice Zahid Kurban Alavi, who is seized of the matter, asked the assignee to draw up a scheme in consultation with the co-liquidator and the investors’ committee and submit it for his approval.
The stuck-up deposits amount to about Rs5 billion, whereas the assets do not value more than Rs one billion. The partial repayment scheme would have benefited about 31,228 investors, leaving out about 8,000 “bogus claimants.”
SUMMONS: A division bench of High Court of Sindh directed the special public prosecutor to appear in the court, along with an affidavit, on April 14 in connection with an alleged wanted terrorist, Ataullah Bokhari, adds APP.
The bench was hearing a constitutional petition filed by younger sister of Ataullah Bokhari who maintained that a joint party of law-enforcement agencies picked up Bokhari at her house in Gulshan-i-Iqbal more than six months back during a massive crackdown against terrorist organizations.
The counsel maintained in the affidavits that on a previous dates of hearing SPP Abdul Waheed, appearing in the trial which was being held inside the Central Prison Karachi, told them that the case could not proceed as the police had arrested Ataullah Bokhari, who was an absconder in the case (van firing case) and that a supplementary challan would be submitted.
The bench, after perusing the two affidavits, directed SPP Abdul Waheed to appear before it on April 14 along with a statement pertaining to the statement which was being attributed to him.
