Adviser urges committee to trash allegations: Stock market crash probe
By Sher Baz Khan
ISLAMABAD, Aug 17: Adviser to the prime minister Dr Salman Shah here on Thursday ‘appealed’ to the National Assembly’s standing committee on finance and revenue to clear the finance ministry and prime minister of allegations of involvement in the March 2005 stock market crash in the ‘national interest’.
He said the ministry of finance was a “national institution and accusations by former Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan’s (SECP) chairman Dr Tariq Hassan regarding its involvement in the last year’s crash of Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) could “gravely harm the image of Pakistan both domestically and internationally”.
Dr Shah has made the appeal in a letter he handed over on Thursday to the chairman of the standing committee Chaudhry Anwar Ali Cheema in a meeting held here at the Parliament House.
He said that the ‘false’ accusation had not only ‘maligned’ him but had ‘politically damaged’ the ‘careers of the Minister of State for Finance, Omar Ayub Khan, and that of the Prime Minister, Shuakat Aziz’ after the issue was blown ‘out of proportion’ in the media. He said the prime minister was accused of having links with powerful brokers and using the finance ministry’s clout to pressure the SECP not to take any action against the brokers, adding that the accusations were false.
But, the members of the standing committee told Dr Shah that no decision could be taken on the issue until the former SECP chief, Dr Tariq Hassan, was invited to defend his stance. The standing committee maintained that it would also invite members of the stock market team, constituted by the SECP soon after the last year’s market crash and headed by Justice (retd) Saleem Akhtar to present their points of view.
The meeting, which was delayed by an hour, lasted only about 45 minutes as it was called off because of a controversy emerging between the standing committee’s members and chairman over the agenda of the meeting.
The members said that the agenda of the meeting was the 2006 market crash that took place in May-June and the terms of reference of the ongoing forensic investigations into the last year’s market fall.
Members Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Kashmala Tariq, Liaqat Baloch and Sardar Tufail said they had not signed any document that had requestioned the meeting with the agenda of “the action taken by the regulator against those who violated the rules and action taken or planned against the ex-chairman of SECP”.
They accused the government of “forging the agenda to divert the focus from the 2006 stock market crash”. But, the chairman of the standing committee ordered an investigation into the fake signatures of some of the members on the papers seeking the holding of the meeting.
Despite requests from the members to continue with the proceedings and take the issue of the latest stock market crash, the chairman called off the meeting.
