June 24, 2007	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 08, 1428

ISLAMABAD, June 23: The big fish behind the multi-billion dollar scam at the Karachi Stock Exchange in March 2005 must have been praying these days that speculations about dissolution of the assemblies early next month turn out to be true.

The filing of a reference against Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz by the opposition has also brought relief to the major players in the scam as it has diverted the attention of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Finance.

“Small investors who suffered huge losses in the crash will now have to wait until a new government is formed,” a source in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SECP) told Dawn here on Friday.

A few months ago, former SECP chief Tariq Hassan had also said at a sitting of the NA’s standing committee that the stock market investigation was unlikely to be completed before the expiry of the assembly’s term.

Most of the officials in the SECP and the finance ministry were sure that the big names would not be known as long as the present set-up was intact.

Even members of the task force that conducted a preliminary probe into the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) bubble-burst had also spoken of efforts aimed at delaying the probe.

Market players had long been insinuating that the $1million forensic probe conducted by a US firm, Diligence, into to the $17 billion scandal was an eyewash.

However, the standing committee’s perseverance has kept the issue alive.

Over the last two months the assembly has not even held a serious discussion on the matter because of its preoccupation with the judiciary crisis. There was no consensus `on the disappearance of data’, thought to be a vital clue.

“None of the ruling party’s MNAs was interested in fixing responsibility for the vanishing of data from the SECP’s computers,” an insider told Dawn. He alleged that attempts were being made to suppress facts.

The nomination of some advisers and high-level officials of the finance ministry by the Task Force had divided the standing committee from day one. The ruling coalition’s legislators had always played down the gravity of the case.