RAWALPINDI: Intelligence officials investigating the money smuggling case against model Ayyan Ali now want to question a rich woman of Karachi who bought the model a luxury apartment for Rs15 million and has about Rs300 million in her bank account.

Sources close to the investigation did not disclose the name of the woman but said the Inland Revenue wing of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is curious to know why a woman apparently a stranger to Ayyan would extend such a big favour to the model.

Ayyan and her story have been in the limelight in the media since she was caught at Islamabad airport on March 14 before she could board a Dubai flight with a suitcase stuffed with half a million dollars and put in Adiala jail.

Scope of the investigation into her conduct was widened after it became known that she rolled in money and had travelled abroad 40 times in a short span of time.

According to sources the FBR will be writing to the airlines she travelled for the identity of the persons who paid for her air tickets. Investigators believe they can shed more light on her suspect travels and activities.

Interestingly, Dubai-based businessman Najeeb Haroon, property dealer Mumtaz Hussain and her mother Farhat Sultana whom Ayyan had mentioned to her interrogators have not responded to summons that the FBR and Customs intelligence to come and account for their part in her story.

Ayyan claimed that she made her money by selling “files” of five plots in high-end Bahria Town estate to Najeeb Haroon through Mumtaz Hussain’s First City estate agency.

But the FBR Inland Revenue intelligence did not find any firm by that name. An FBR team, headed by its Director General Haroon M. K. Tareen, meanwhile, is continuing to look into the tax records of Ayyan Ali and her mother.

A Customs officer said that while the trial court will decide whether she is guilty or not of money smuggling, the disposal of the $500,000 she was caught with lays with the Customs Adjudication Collectorate.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2015

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