LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has exonerated its former chief Bashir Memon of all charges in different probes initiated against him allegedly at the behest of former prime minister Imran Khan and his adviser on accountability Shahzad Akbar during the PTI government.

An FIA investigating officer on Tuesday told the sessions court that the agency had not found any evidence against its former director general Bashir Memon in three inquiries.

Upon the FIA’s declaration, Mr Memon withdrew his plea for pre-arrest bail.

Mr Memon was accused of facilitating Umar Farooq Zahoor, a suspect in cases of financial crimes in Zurich and Oslo and human trafficking during his tenure as the FIA DG.

Talking to Dawn on Tuesday, Mr Memon said he was implicated in the cases initiated last year at the behest of Mr Khan and his adviser Shahzad Akbar.

“Since my refusal being the FIA DG to fulfill Mr Khan’s desire to go after his political opponents, he (Khan) nurtured a personal grudge (against me) and wanted to teach me a lesson by instituting false cases,” he said, adding that Mr Akbar tried his best to use the FIA against him, but failed. “The FIA was ordered to do to me what it did with journalist Mohsin Baig but luckily I had secured a pre-arrest bail.”

He said the fraud cases were registered in 2004, 2009 and 2010 and investigated subsequently.

Mr Memon remained in the news for some time after he made an explosive revelation in 2019 that being the FIA DG, he was summoned to the ‘highest office’ in the country and was asked to file a ‘terrorism case’ against the members of PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz’s social media cell after a picture of Imran Khan’s wife (Bushra Bibi) was circulated online.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2022