ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court will indict four officers of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) and Customs Department for violating its 2006 judgement in a case relating to money laundering.

A two-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan will formerly frame contempt of court charges against Second Secretary of FBR Dr Sadiqullah, Joint Director at the SBP’s Exchange Policy Department Aftab Iqbal Siddiqui, SBP official Syed Samad Hussain and Additional Collectors Customs Abdur Razzaq.

The court has also ordered Attorney General Ashtar Ausaf to appear as a prosecutor against the accused for committing contempt of the court. The next hearing date will be decided later.

Senior counsel Raja Mohammad Irshad appeared on behalf of Abdur Razzaq whereas Deputy Attorney General Sohail Mehmood represented the government.

The contempt of court proceedings was initiated by former chief justice Nasirul Mulk on an anonymous letter in Urdu language titled “Jail Companion”.

In August 2006, a passenger Allah Bash was arrested at the Islamabad Airport while travelling to Beijing when he was trying to smuggle out 100,000 dollars and 2600 Chinese yuan. The customs department confiscated the amount and registered a money laundering case.

The anonymous letter had regretted that the FBR through its notification of Aug 18, 2010, as well as the SBP through its order of Sept 15, 2010 ordered regularisation of the foreign currency earlier seized by the Customs Department on the charges of money laundering. Thus, not only a no objection certificate was issued by the important government departments but the money was also ordered to be released despite the fact that the Special Judge Customs Rawalpindi on May 29, 2010 had awarded five-year jail term with a fine of Rs500,000.

The anonymous letter deplored that the special treatment was meted out to Allah Bash at the behest of the then prime minister since he was a companion when the prime minister was spending his days in the jail on corruption charges.

The letter stated that the government departments ignored moving appeal against issuance of no objection certificate to Allah Bash by FBR and SBP stating that they have no objection if the foreign exchange was released in favour of the convict passenger.

The entire episode, the letter stated, was against the 2006 judgement of the Supreme Court in the Khud-i-Noor case in which the apex court had held that under the Protection of Economic Reforms Act, 1992, certain facilities have been given for the purpose of development and promotion of the economic activities in the country. But, simultaneously there is a need to check that the foreign currency is not moved out the country in an unauthorised manner otherwise it would promote the offence of money laundering as well as adversely affect the public exchequer, the judgement had said.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2016