KARACHI: A district court on Thursday issued arrest warrants for prosecution witnesses for failing to testify against six Chinese nationals in cases pertaining to alleged ATM skimming and illegal transfer of money abroad.

Six Chinese nationals — Zhang Qiaocheng, Zhong Showen, Liu Liming, Xiao Jianjun, Zhu Yu Ping and Zeng Chun You — have been charged with committing electronic crimes, fraud and forgery.

The matter came up before the district and sessions’ judge (South), Amjad Ali Bohio, but when the accused were produced from prison, the prosecution failed to produce the witnesses.

Federal Investigation agency (FIA) SHO Sub-inspector Imran appeared and received the show-cause notice over the delays in the trial and failure to produce the prosecution witnesses before the court to record their testimonies against the accused persons.

The judge took notice of the absence of the witnesses and issued bailable warrants for their arrest through the FIA director who was told to arrest the witnesses and produce them before the court on July 10 for recording their statements.

The FIA’s cybercrime cell had detained the Chinese men in separate raids in 2016 and 2018.

According to the prosecution, two Chinese men — Zhang Qiaocheng and Zhong Showen — were arrested while they were allegedly planting a skimming device in an ATM in Zainab Market to steal data of its customers.

It also mentioned that the accused entered an ATM booth on main Abdullah Haroon Road and instead of drawing cash, they were seen doing some suspicious activity in the real-time surveillance feed.

The accused tried to escape, but the area people caught them. A skimming device was allegedly recovered from their possession, it added. Both the suspects had arrived in Pakistan on Jan 2 on business visas.

The cell also mentioned that the management of Habib Bank Limited filed a complaint confirming that over Rs10 million had been stolen from 559 of its customers’ accounts through bogus ATM, credit and debit cards. The transactions had been traced to Indonesia, China, and other countries, it added.

Earlier, in June 2016, the FIA had arrested two Chinese nationals for allegedly stealing data from a private bank with skimming devices at one of its ATM facilities.

The bank had reported to the FIA about suspicious activity of two foreigners at their Plaza Square branch. The FIA claimed to have recovered some electronic equipment, two skimming devices, each having a 16GB memory card, Chinese passports and identity cards of the suspects and different cards of Chinese banks.

The separate cases were registered at the FIA Cybercrime Circle under sections 3 (unauthorised access to information system or data), 4 (unauthorised copying or transmission of data), 5 (interference with information system or data), 13 (electronic forgery), 14 (electronic fraud) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 read with sections 420 (cheating or dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 109 (punishment for abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2019