PESHAWAR: An accountability court has ordered the release of a co-accused, who turned approver in a fraud case against a fake online investment company.

Judge Kulsoom Azam issued the order after accepting a formal request of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for the release of co-accused Bin-e-Amin, the director of fake company Payslash, for turning an approver against the prime accused, Mohammad Taimur.

NAB prosecutor Habibullah Baig said the anti-corruption watchdog had taken cognisance of the matter and authorised an inquiry on Feb 1, 2021, which, on the confirmation of allegations, was converted into investigation on June 15, 2021.

He said the investigation revealed that in the year 2019, the main accused, through a fake Facebook ID, had lured the people into investing money in an online business.

NAB had put up formal request for purpose

Mr Baig said the name of the company’s website was changed several times and was finally called www.pslashuk.com.

He said the investors were also lured to promote the business and convince people for putting their money into it to generate more investments under their account and thus, ‘forming a tree or pyramid’.

The NAB prosecutor said thousands of people invested millions of rupees in the fake online business in that way.

He said co-accused Bin-e-Amin was arrested as he was shown as the director in the company, but he (co-accused) had formally told the bureau that he was only an employee of the company and not the director.

Mr Baig said the co-accused had offered to become an approver against the main accused, Mohammad Taimur, and that the plea was accepted leading to its forwarding to the court for approval and his release.

The Peshawar High Court had turned down bail plea of the prime accused in Oct last year.

REMANDED: The court remanded a suspect in a rent-a-car business fraud case into the NAB custody for seven days.

The NAB prosecutor said Samiullah, the chief executive officer of a private company, along with another suspect, Mansoor Akhtar Danish, had received money from 66 people by making attractive profit offers for their investment.

He claimed that the suspects provided profits to the investors for quite sometimes but stopped them afterwards and disappeared.

The prosecutor claimed that the suspects had embezzled around Rs77.7 million.

He said two years ago, the NAB had ordered the arrest of suspect Samiullah but as he was at large, he could not be apprehended.

The prosecutor said a few days ago, the suspect had filed a pre-arrest bail plea with the court but it was rejected leading to his arrest by the bureau.

He said the suspect’s physical custody was required for investigation.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2022