RAWALPINDI: Tax officials have summoned for questioning a Karachi-based woman who, tax investigators say, bought model Ayyan Ali an apartment for around Rs15 million.

Sources close to the teams investigating Ayyan Ali for currency smuggling said the Inland Revenue wing of the Federal Bureau of Revenue issued the summons to the womanwho lives in Clifton, Karachi.

“Let us see if she responds to the summons,” said one source, recalling that others similarly called had ignored the summons.

Read: Another woman catches eye of taxmen probing Ayyan Ali’s case

Earlier, the FBR’s investigating team had called Ayyan’s mother Farhat Sultana and Dubai-based Najeeb Haroon.

Ayyan had claimed to interrogators that the $500,000 she was caught with at Islamabad airport on March 14, before she could board a flight to Dubai, were the proceeds of “files” of five plots in Bahria Town she had sold to Najeeb Haroon through the deal-maker Mumtaz Hussain.

The FBR is investigating whether any taxes were evaded in the process. Its investigators had also been looking into the possibility that the ‘flight of capital’ was meant for criminal activities but so far have found no such evidence.

Meanwhile, the Bahria Town administration has rejected Ayyan’s claim that she owned plots there.

Also read: ‘Interim challan states Ayyan is guilty’

Though the Customs department has prepared a charge-sheet against Ayyan Ali regarding money smuggling , tax and intelligence agents allege the department is reluctant to share the CCTV images of the model’s arrival at Islamabad airport where she is believed to have been “facilitated” by a mysterious man.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play