Many businessmen of Pakistani origin do good business in the UK. At least a dozen of them are on the UK’s list of tycoons. But except for a few most appear to be rather reluctant to take their chances in Pakistan.

Most of them do praise the economic policies of the present government but when asked why they are shy of investing in the country of their origin, they would hum and haw, avert their eyes and change the topic. On being pressed, they would present a long list of formidable red-tape rigmarole that they are required to pass through to start even the brick and mortar part of the investment.

Having been pestered by me over the last several months for the real reason in not going to Pakistan but instead choosing Russia where they need an interpreter and where the rules of the game are still as primitive as they were in the Soviet Union, a group of businessmen of Pakistani origin invited me to a leisurely tea and introduced me to some one who they said would tell me the real reasons why they want to keep their money as far away from Pakistan as they could.

The man, an IT expert by the name Amer Nazir related a horrifying story of persecution by an influential association of professionals which had top level contacts in the NAB and used the organization to hound him out of the country without a penny in his pocket. Amer said he had owned and managed the largest IT group of companies in Pakistan.

“But in the year 2002, my business was snatched from me and I was persecuted and victimized to the extent that my wife, daughters, and I were forced to leave the country,” he said.

Amer started his first IT company in 1986 at the age of 24 and established several other companies over the next 18 years. Collectively known as the E-Tech Group of Companies, the group employed 250 personnel in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad.

The E-Tech Group pioneered e-commerce in the country and introduced many firsts in Pakistan including — International portal from Pakistan which was accessed in 56 countries; fibre-optic based ISP; internet-based financial instrument ‘e-card’ (lauded by MasterCard International as an example for developing countries that do not have access to electronic payment gateways) and; virtual shopping mall that accepted payments in Pakistani currency, etc…

The Group also conducted the first B2B and B2C transactions and developed several software systems including one that made live trading possible on Pakistan’s stock markets while sitting anywhere in the world, and another enabled the SME sector to trade and conduct financial transactions on the Internet.

The Group had financing of approximately Rs200 million and its principal partners included Reuters, IBM, Compaq, Intel, Acer, HP, Siemens, Computerland, Thomson Learning, Bailee Net of China, Aces etc. The Group being the only e-commerce group of its kind in Pakistan entered in the largest IT and e-commerce agreement with PIA.

The alliance included worldwide sale of PIA tickets through internet and telephone, last-minute auction of seats, the setting up of an international call centre and the frequent flyer programme. There was also mutual co-branding of the PIA Frequent Flyer Card and the E-Tech Group e-card, which were to be linked to other global partners including banks, hotels, car-rental companies etc.

The first milestone of the agreement was achieved in February 2002 when the new PIA frequent flyer programme was launched on company’s portal (hilinks.com) as well as on the new PIA website which was designed and managed by the Group. And although Sabre Corporation had quoted one million dollars for this work – the Group did not charge PIA any fee.

In fact, it agreed to invest in all the projects and to only share profits arising out of the increases in conventional PIA revenues and from the new alternate revenue streams that the company designed for PIA and which the PIA board approved.

Earlier, in the year 2000, a fund owned by groups of professionals had become 50 per cent partners in the Group but two years later, due to internal politics, a group of these professionals ended up blaming their own trustees for embezzling money from the business in connivance with Amer.

The case was taken over by NAB even though the matter did not fall under NAB’s jurisdiction as defined by its own mandate since there was no involvement of the government, public, or bank funds and since it was essentially a dispute between two private parties.

Then Amer related a story which sounded more like a script of a Hollywood movie in which wheels are shown to be working within wheels and victim is depicted running from pillar to post seeking justice but denied by the very people who are paid from tax payers’ money to protect the life and property of the citizens.

What was more condemnable was the way the NAB in collusion with his persecutors tried to force him to sell his share of the company worth at least $10 million for a pittance. When he refused he was dragged through the courts, threatened with arrest, interrogated by NAB officials and even put on the ECL.

The persecution was so relentless that he was reduced to penury and his family had to flee the country to take refuge in the UK. Finally when he could not take it any more and managed somehow to get his name removed from the ECL, he too fled the country as a destitute.

The NAB sword still dangled over his head, but then in early 2005, he received written notices from NAB that all the cases against his wife and him had been dropped — and that there would not be any reference against him.

Encouraged and hopeful once again, he wrote an application to LT.

General Munir Hafeez requesting for justice and for the recovery of his assets from his persecutors as NAB had promised. But there was no response.

In December 2006, the British government granted him humanitarian protection for five years while his wife and daughters being British citizens are entitled to government help. He claims that the British government granted him the status because the documentations of his persecution clearly showed that he was innocent of crime.

When he ended the story punctuated with display of relevant documents I was too dumb founded to ask any questions. And my hosts did not have the heart to tell me: Now you know why.