LAHORE, July 26: The Lahore High Court on Monday granted bail to Mehreen Haroon, the wife of Haroon Ahmad, the chief executive of the Rauf International, which is alleged to be involved in a foreign exchange scam.
A division bench of the Lahore High Court, comprising justices Tasaddaq Husain Jilani and Saeed Akhtar, however, ordered Ms Mehreen not to leave the country. The court directed the interior ministry that her name be put on the exit control list and her passport given to the National Accountability Bureau.
Ms Mehreen contended in her bail plea that she was being punished because she was related to a person facing criminal charges. A visiting lecturer of the National College of Arts, Ms Mehreen was arrested and remanded in the NAB custody last month.
Her counsel Haider Zaman Qureshi submitted that her arrest and subsequent remand in the NAB custody was unlawful because the appellant was neither a director nor held any control over the management of the Rauf International.
The counsel contended that the NAB judge had committed an unlawful act when he ordered the arrest of Ms Mehreen and later remanded her in the NAB custody on June 17. The Rauf International is among several companies which received deposits in foreign exchange on highly attractive terms. Later, some of them were wound up and others just ran away misappropriating deposits worth millions of dollars.
When the affected people started filing complaints, the LHC issued notices to the State Bank of Pakistan and the Securities Exchange Commission of Pakistan to explain the position.
The SECP submitted that all such companies should be proceeded against as they were indulging in illegal banking by receiving deposits without sovereign guarantees of repayment of money from deposits.
Rauf International's Haroon Ahmad, along with several others, stopped business and went missing. The NAB suspected he had left the country and his wife was about to do so when arrested.
