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Pak-origin couple indicted for conspiracy against US

By Wajid Ali Syed
August 19, 2017

WASHINGTON: A Pakistani origin couple has been indicted by a federal grand jury here on Thursday on at least four counts of conspiracy against the United States. 

The couple identified as Imran Awan and his wife Hina Alvi had worked for various members of Congress as their Information Technology aides. “Defendants Awan and Alvi did unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly conspire, combine, confederate, and agree with each other to commit offenses against the United States,” the indictment available with The News said. An arraignment date has not yet been set.  

The fraudulent activity by the couple, along with the bunch of their close relatives, first surfaced in February when a local publication Daily Caller reported that Congressional IT staffers have been the subject of a criminal investigation into misusing their positions.

Working as IT staffers for multiple congress members, the duo and their clique had “full access to correspondence, emails, and confidential files.”   During the stint four of Awan's relatives, including his brothers Abid and Jamal, appeared on the payroll of dozens of Congressional members and collected more than four million dollars in funds since 2009.

They were abruptly relieved of their duties on suspicion that they accessed congressional computers without permission. More so, Abid, Jamal and Imran were barred form computer networks at the Capitol Hill where they were able to access the computers of Intelligence, House and Foreign Affairs Committee members. Such committees deal with many of the country's sensitive issues and documents. Given the suspected violations, most of the congress members terminated Awan’s services except Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz from Florida. Schultz was also the target of a disastrous email hack when she served as chair of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election campaign. She later resigned from the post when WikiLeaks published thousands of internal emails obtained by some 'unidentified hacker.'  

None of the Congress members, whose list is with The News, and who later fired Awan responded to queries put forward by The News.   When the US Capitol police named Awan and all others as suspects of theft, blackmailing and fraud, Shultz, in return, threatened the police with "consequences" for holding technical equipment, including computers that she said belonged to her. The police simply wanted to investigate the allegations of massive breach in funneling sensitive congressional data offsite without the knowledge of the authorities. Another publication Politico had described Awan and his wife as having a “friendly personal relationship” with Schultz and Congressman Gregory Meeks of New York.  

Interestingly, Shultz retained Imran Awan for months until he was finally arrested by the FBI on July 24th when he tried to flee to Pakistan. Awan’s wife, Hina Alvi, had already left for Pakistan with their children in March. She was first stopped for carrying more than 12,000 dollars in cash but was later let go. The FBI found out that Awan had already wired almost 300 thousand dollars to Pakistan. "On January 18, an international wire transfer form was submitted at the Congressional Federal Credit Union in the amount of 283,000 dollars to two individuals in Faisalabad, Pakistan," an affidavit submitted by the FBI revealed.  

Top slots on Capitol Hill are subject to fierce competition, and the median salty for legislative assistants in 43,000 annually, according to InsideGov.com. Imran Awan had collected 1.2 million dollars in salary since 2010, and his brother Abid and wife Hina Alvi were each paid more than one million dollars as quoted by the publication.

 “Imran first came to Capitol Hill in the early 2000s and Abid joined him in 2005. Imran’s wife Hina Alvi was added to the payroll in 2007, while Abid's wife Natalia Sova, appeared in 2011. Finally, in 2014 the youngest sibling—Jamal--joined the payroll at the age of 20 with a salary of 160,000 dollars,” the Daily Caller report said. It also mentioned Legistorm.com, that tracks confessional staff data, saying that since 2003 the family has collected five million dollars overall, with Imran making two million dollars and Abid making 1.5 million dollars.