KARACHI The Federal Investigation Agency on Tuesday filed a final charge-sheet against three detained foreign exchange dealers before a district and sessions court and prayed to the court to issue red warrants for the arrest of eight other absconding suspects.
The FIA submitted the final charge-sheet before District and Sessions Judge (south) Faheem Ahmed Siddiqi against the three suspects — Abdul Munaf Kalia, his brother, Hanif Kalia, and Javed Khanani — for their alleged involvement in a money laundering case.
Javed Khanani and Munaf Kalia were produced in court on Tuesday while the third suspect, Hanif Kalia, was not produced because he was currently under treatment at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre.
In the final charge-sheet, the FIA showed eight other suspects — Javed Qasim, Altaf Khanani, Iqbal, Atif Polani, Arif Zakaria, Amir Zakaria, Aziz Polani and Javed Polani — as absconding accomplices of the arrested foreign exchange dealers.
The FIA requested the court to issue red warrants for the arrest of the absconding suspects.
However, the defence counsel opposed the plea on the ground that a court had no authority to issue a red warrant directly.
He argued that only the government could issue a red warrant through Interpol, adding that the arrest of a suspect could only be secured in a foreign country with which Pakistan had an extradition treaty.
Hearing his arguments, the court appointed senior lawyer Mohammad Ashraf Qazi as amicus curiae and asked him to appear on March 3 to help the court in finding out whether a trial court could indeed issues red warrants.
Senior lawyer Shaukat Hayat represented the suspects.
The final charge-sheet also contained names of 80 prosecution witnesses. It said that a case was registered against the suspects on Nov 15 after initiating an inquiry on a complaint (118/08) lodged by the State Bank of Pakistan regarding an illegal transfer of money abroad. Besides two official websites, the firm had fraudulently created a website (www.clickpk.net) and database 'Exchange plus' and 'Foxpro' with criminal intentions without declaring it to the SBP and used them for illegal transactions, the charge-sheet added.
The company had also installed huge computing machines and devices at its head office at Saima Trade Centre on I.I. Chundrigar Road, which enabled the company's franchise offices set up across the country automatic access to the main system in order to facilitate such transactions.
The charge-sheet also said that the suspects allegedly used to get the help of a Dubai-based exchange firm for money laundering and in this regard absconding suspects, Atif Polani and Javed Qasim, helped them.
A case (76/08) was registered against the suspects under Sections 5/8, 22/23 of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947, read with Sections 7, 8 and 20 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance, 2007, and Sections 420, 467, 471, 477-A of the Pakistan Penal Code at the FIA's crime circle branch in Karachi.
Another case (FIR32/08) was registered against them under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947, at the FIA crime circle, Lahore.
The court also directed the jail authorities to arrange a complete medical examination of Javed Khanani and come up with a final report on the next date of hearing.