ISLAMABAD: The Federal Investigation Agency informed the Supreme Court on Wednesday that it had carried out an inquiry to verify the authenticity of allegations against Makhdoom Amin Fahim that Rs 41 million had been transferred to three accounts of the commerce minister or his family by the late Zafar Saleem, a director general of the Sindh Workers Fund.

Amin Fahim told the investigators that his assistant Ali Hassan was in charge of such transactions and he was ignorant of it. Ali Hassan, however, admitted that the money related to a land transaction and for payment of loans, but that he would refund it.

Moazzam Jah, the FIA’s Karachi chief, made the disclosure during a hearing of a contempt charge against the agency’s Director General Malik Mohammad Iqbal for interfering in judicial affairs by writing a letter to the interior ministry which resulted in the transfer of an officer who was investigating the multi-billion-rupee scam in the National Insurance Company (NICL).

A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Tariq Parvez and Justice Amir Hani Muslim reserved the judgment for a fortnight, providing Establishment Secretary Abdul Rauf Chaudhry another opportunity to rescind the notification transferring FIA’s Additional Director General Zafar Ahmed Qureshi to the National Police Foundation (NPF).

Moazzam Jah, the FIA director, said red warrants had been issued against Khwaja Akbar Butt, a cousin of Zafar Saleem and also involved in the transaction.

He said the FIA had detached another 10 acres of land and Rs100 million in cash, including Rs55 million from Ayaz Khan Niazi, a former NICL chairman. The agency, he added, had also procured cheques worth Rs410 million, but these had yet to get clearance.

The chief justice warned that if progress was not made the entire investigation team would land in jail. He said the court was fed up with the paperwork.

Malik Iqbal, the FIA DG, had on April 16 written a letter to the interior ministry about the NICL investigation, informing it about the submission to relevant courts of interim challans and some recovery. Consequently on April 18, the Cabinet Division issued a notification transferring Mr Qureshi to the NPF even though the investigation was in progress.

On Wednesday Rauf Chaudhry, the establishment secretary, informed the court that the notification was issued on verbal orders of the competent authority (prime minister).

The court said it seemed that the establishment secretary was trying to say that the prime minister himself had intervened in the matter. “What was the necessity to put the issue before the prime minister when the notification says something else,” the chief justice said.

Rauf Chaudhry insisted that he did not send any summary to the prime minister for the transfer of Zafar Qureshi. Nevertheless, he had to issue the notification at 10pm on April 18 on verbal orders of the competent authority he had received the same day without any summary.

Interior Secretary Qamar Zaman informed the court that his office had never initiated any summary; rather the letter received from the FIA chief had been forwarded to the establishment secretary under the rules of business.

The chief justice deplored that Zafar Qureshi had been dissociated from the inquiry under a plan when no one had asked for his transfer.

Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, counsel for the FIA DG and the federal government, said Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq could testify that he (Mr Pirzada) had been trying for over a year to avoid such a situation where the two institutions confronted each other, adding that he had time and again requested the court to proceed carefully and let institutions function.

“We cannot allow institutions to be destroyed. No one is perfect and institutions evolve themselves,” he said.

The chief justice observed that the court had been exercising restraint for the past many months only to ensure that institutions did not come into confrontation. “We want the system to function. Convey to your government that we have nothing to do with the recovered money as it belongs to the general public and the government can take benefit of it.

“Yesterday, over the Flood Commission report, we have appreciated the government’s steps,” the chief justice recalled.