KARACHI: A banking court on Saturday issued warrants for arrest of the heads of at least eight sugar mills owned by the Omni Group in a case pertaining to alleged pilferage of Rs11 billion worth of sugar stocks pledged to different banks against financial loans obtained by the group.

Judge Muhammad Saad Qureshi directed the SHO of the Clifton police station to arrest the chief executive officers/directors of the sugar mills and produce them in court on Nov 14.

The banking court-III issued bailable warrants in sum of Rs1 million each against Khawaja Anwer Majeed, Saima Ali Majid, Khawaja Mustafa Zulqarnain Majid, Khawaja Ali Kamal Majid, Khawaja Nimr Majid, Rashid Ahmed Khan, Nihal Anwar, Muhammad Zeeshan Khan, the CEO/director of the KG Traders Private Limited, Sajjad Ahmed, the CEO/director of Talha Associates Private Limited and Ansari Sugar Mills Limited.

The management of different banks, including National Bank of Pakistan, Silk Bank Private Limited and others had filed criminal applications under Section 201(a) of the Financial Institutions (Recovery of Finances) Ordinance, 2001 seeking action against the sugar mills’ CEOs/directors regarding the alleged pilferage of the sugar stocks pledged to them against bank loans obtained by them.

The issue had surfaced when the head of a joint investigation team probing into the ‘fake’ accounts case had recently disclosed before the Supreme Court that the stocks shown against the loans of around Rs50bn obtained from the NBP, Sindh Bank and Summit Bank had been removed or taken away from nine sugar mills of the Omni Group situated in different parts of Sindh.

According to the JIT’s head, the mandatory stocks against those loans were not available as there must be stocks worth Rs13.5bn, but only Rs2bn was available and the remaining Rs11.5bn worth stock was missing.

The apex court had directed the Federal Investigation Agency to lodge FIRs against officials of the mills. 

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2018