FIA nominates Javed Khanani in money laundering case

Karachi
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Friday submitted another charge of financial corruption against Javed Khanani, the director of Khanani and Kalia International, in the court of Judicial Magistrate for district East.
A similar charge sheet alleging that Javed Khanani and his colleagues had violated the business rules while transferring millions of rupees to other countries has also been submitted to the Special Banking Court.
On Wednesday, Khanani and his manager Taufeeq were sent to jail on a judicial remand for their alleged involvement in laundering a sum amounting to Rs140 million in 2008.
The Judicial Magistrate for district East also directed the Investigation Officer (IO) to submit the final charge sheet in the cases concerned.
Both Khanani and Taufeeq had been arrested by the FIA a few days ago and then granted bail by a local court against a sum of Rs5 million each.
Their counsels had argued that the laws the accused were being tried under were formulated in 2010 while the action against their clients for which they were arrested had taken place in 2008.
Subsequently, the Special Banking Court while considering the arguments had granted bail to the two accused in the sum of Rs5 million each.
Khanani and Taufeeq had been caught by the FIA after receiving a report from its Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) that during a short period of only two months, transactions of more than Rs140 million had been made from a single account.
The FIA lodged money laundering cases against the accused under Sections 3/4 and other provisions dealing with corrupt financial practices pertaining to the violation of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) regulations.
However, the laws under which the cases were lodged was formulated in 2010 and the lawyers used to this to their advantage to plead that the accused were caught two years ago and this was contrary to the spirit of justice.
The director of Khanani and Kalia International
faces several cases of money laundering along with eight others including Hanif Kalia, Munaf Kalia and Atif Aziz Polani.
In some of the cases, Hanif Kalia, Munaf Kalia, Javed Khanani and Atif Polani were booked by the FIA on the SBP’s complaint for illegal foreign exchange transfer and running parallel banking.
According to the FIA, the accused conducted illegal transfers of foreign exchange worth billions of dollars in collusion with different foreign exchange companies, money changers and businessmen.
Munaf Kalia and Javed Khanani were arrested by the FIA on the charges of running the country’s biggest money laundering scam from Karachi and Lahore respectively in November 2008.