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KARACHI, July 24: The investors of defunct Alliance Motors and T.J. Ibrahim companies will shortly be paid 20 per cent of their stuck-up deposits, according to a plan approved by the Sindh High Court on Thursday.
The plan was submitted by joint liquidators, Advocate Shafi Mohammadi and SHC official assignee Bashir Ahmed Memon in the form of a reference and was approved by Justice Maqbool Baqar in the presence of the officials and counsel of the National Accountability Bureau.
The companies were liquidated in 1989 and claims were invited and verified by the official assignee in 1992. No payments could, however, be made due to litigation over company assets and disappearance of the offending promoters and directors. Several absconders, including Hamid Qureshi, Ibrahim, Tayyab and Asghar Qureshi have since been arrested by the National Accountability Bureau on information provided by a court-appointed advisory committee of investors.
The NAB authorities, however, rechecked the claims verified and approved in 1992 and dropped 10,154 of them in consultation with the arrested directors.
A random scrutiny of the rejected claims by the liquidators and NAB officials found nothing wrong with them. The disputed claims are now proposed by the reference to be re-examined by the court itself.
The amount or percentage of the deposits to be refunded is to be determined by the availability of funds and assets recovered. The funds in hand amount to more than Rs 620 million while Rs 300 million more are likely to be recovered in the near future.
The plan envisages disbursement of 20 per cent of the undisputed claims with effect from the last week of the current month. The amount of disputed claims is to be kept separately till such time as they have been examined and approved by the court. Similarly, the amount of claims involved in litigation will also be kept separately.
The disbursement process will be supervised by a panel comprising the joint liquidators, the representatives of the investors’ advisory committee and a nominee of the NAB.
The second instalment would be disbursed when more funds are received from the NAB (Sindh).
The liquidators have requested the high court to depute at least three female judicial officers to deal with the claims filed by women.
ICA RESTRAINED: The Sindh High Court on Thursday restrained the Institute of Chartered Accountants from proceeding against one of its members pending his petition, which was fixed for hearing on July 31.
Chartered accountant Ghulam Haider submitted through his counsel, Syed Sami Ahmad, that he was being victimized for welcoming an official move for equitable distribution of work in the profession to curb monopolistic tendencies.
In violation of the provisions of the Chartered Accountants Ordinance, 1961, he further submitted, suo moto action was initiated against him by the ICA Council. There was no complainant or aggrieved party before the council to set the machinery of law in motion as required by the ordinance yet it issued him a show cause notice. And “without waiting for his reply to the notice”, the council instituted an inquiry against him. The seven-member investigation committee consisted of several council members who had ordered the impugned “arbitrary” probe against him.
The petitioner said the ICA council was out to find him guilty of professional misconduct and debar him from practising his profession for a considerable period of time. He had no efficacious remedy but to invoke the writ jurisdiction of the high court against “arbitrary and unlawful proceedings” being conducted against him.
A division bench, comprising Justices Zahid Kurban Alavi and Zia Perwez, stayed further proceedings against the petitioner and issued notices to the respondents for July 31.
