LAHORE, Nov 3: At least four forex companies alleged to be involved in illegal banking business have approached the National Accountability Bureau, seeking its assistance for repayment of their liabilities to depositors.

A senior Punjab NAB official told reporters here on Monday the cell set up to investigate the so-called “forex scam” had already 1,300 complaints from their depositors. He said the NAB intended to invite depositors of these companies to file claims along with original documents supporting their claims in the next few days.

The Punjab NAB is probing into the matters related to 52 forex companies —- 23 registered and 29 unregistered —- as authorized by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan.

“We are encouraging directors and sponsors of these companies, through various means, to come forward and voluntarily pay up the deposits (to their clients),” he said. He, however, gave the name of only M/s Rauf International whose directors had sought the NAB assistance to offload their liabilities. “We can’t give the names of the other companies at this stage,” the official said.

He said “no criminal investigation would be launched against a company that actually pays up its liabilities”. However, he said, those defaulting on their liabilities would have to face criminal charges and suffer the consequences.

In reply to a question, the official said it was yet not clear as to how much did these companies owe to their depositors. But, he said, it was estimated that a sum of Rs3-4 billion was involved.

He said directors of some forex companies had fled the country. He said a large chunk of deposits had already been parked outside the country as was evident from a probe into the bank accounts of directors and companies that had been frozen under a Lahore High Court order. But, he said, “we’ll bring back both directors and money of depositors as we have done in several other cases”.

In response to another question, he said the NAB had disbursed Rs1.144 billion among 10,169 affectees of the co-operative scam so far. Another Rs65 million will be disbursed during this month.

Talking about the performance of the NAB, the official said it had been authorized to investigate 537 cases of corruption. Of them, 181 cases had been filed with the accountability courts. As many as 89 cases have already been decided by the courts in which 73 were convicted, eight acquitted and as many withdrawn.