ISLAMABAD, May 28: The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Finance will keep an eye on the findings of an FBI team which has reportedly arrived here to probe a possible connection between some Pakistani brokers, bankers and top policymakers with two Pakistani bankers involved in a multi-million-dollar insider trading scam in the US.
Any connection between Hafiz Mohammad Zubair Naseem and Ejaz Rahim, involved in the insider trading scam linked to acquisitions of nine US public companies, and the cartel behind the March 2005 Karachi Stock Exchange crash will be of immense help to the committee, which has now constituted a seven-member sub-committee to prepare its own comprehensive report on the market crash.
The report will be presented to parliament for debate.
A majority of the committee members believe that only a powerful government like that of the United States could unearth the cartel involved in insider trading at the international level and their men in Pakistan and the Middle East and bring them to justice.
However, at the committee’s meeting held at the Parliament House here on Monday, Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan was quick to brush aside any official contacts between the FBI team and Pakistani authorities.
“We have not received any request from the US government to help the FBI in its probe at the official level,” said Omar Ayub.
But reports of the presence of US intelligence officers and their meetings with some top Pakistani officials have compelled the standing committee not to close the chapter of the KSE fall, at least at this stage.
Quoting media reports, committee members Kashmala Tariq and Ghulam Murtaza Satti said it seemed that FBI teams had contacted some of the “big fish” who had been nominated by the Task Force, headed by Justice (retd) Saleem Akhtar, in its report on the market crash.
According to media reports, an FBI team comprising Mark Emerson, Alfred Martial and Joseph Simon has reached the US embassy here and contacted some Pakistani officials.
Kashmala Tariq read out a media report to the committee which claimed that the FBI team had met some officials of the State Bank of Pakistan, National Bank of Pakistan, Central Board of Revenue chairman Abdullah Yousaf, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance Dr Salman Shah, a few top brokers at the KSE and a man close to Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi.
Media reports have also hinted towards the links between those behind the US insider trading scam and some people, who are now serving in the SECP, at a time when they were employees of some big brokers at the KSE.
The US embassy in Islamabad has also not denied such reports.
SECP chairman Razi-ur-Rehman told the meeting that the SEC, US, had approached the commission and conveyed to it the names of the two Pakistani bankers.
Naveed Qamar said the finance ministry’s adviser had praised the bullish trend in the KSE through statements in the media and, thus, had lured small investors into investing in the stocks for reaping windfall.
