Fake bank accounts case: NAB makes another important arrest

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) arrested Chairman Overseas Cooperative Society Ijaz Haroon on Thursday over money laundering charges in the fake bank accounts case. 

According to the anti-graft body, Haroon laundered Rs144 million for the Omni Group. The bureau alleged that  Haroon sold 12 fictitious plots of land to an equal number of fake allottees.

According to NAB, these 12 fake plots were used to launder Rs144 million for Omni Group.

The bureau also claimed that Rs144 million were laundered via two fake bank accounts.

The fake bank accounts case in a nutshell

In October 2015, the anti-corruption wing of the Federal Investigation Agency in Karachi received a tip off of suspicious intra-bank transactions from the Summit Bank, Sindh Bank and the United Bank Limited. The profiles of the account holders did not match their earnings/income. FIA authorities suspected that these accounts were being run by the Zardari Group and Omni Group, amongst others.

The case dragged on until June 2018, when the Supreme Court took suo moto notice of the fake accounts and directed a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the matter.

The JIT found that 32 fake bank accounts were being operated by 11 fake entities to launder money from “kickbacks, land grabbing and large scale misappropriation of public funds.”

Former president Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur were arrested by NAB on charges of laundering money in the same fake bank accounts case.