‘Probe into mega corruption cases to be expedited’

KARACHI: Former DIG East Amir Farooqui has taken over the charge of the Director FIA Sindh Zone and has been posted to enhance the performance of the Agency in province suffering long from institutional rot.

Farooqui is reputed to be an honest and a merit observant officer posted to improve the performances of FIA. Earlier as the DIG South, he had registered an FIR against the brother of a provincial minister following which he was transferred to FIA headquarters, as head of cybercrime and immigration. He instead contributed to their perfromance. It is pertinent to mention that he gave his first exclusive interview to ‘Daily Jang’, after being posted in Sindh.

Talking about his future ventures, Director FIA said that his priority is to investigate money laundering cases under Anti-Money Laundering Act-2010 and to register cases against them besides winding up inquiries in other pending investigations. Farooqui said he would also try to get the criminals convicted after thorough investigations and added he would keep the cybercrime cell and counter-terrorism wing under watch as the director FIA. In the past, he said the FIA was defamed due to some officials of the cybercrime cell against whom a report has been compiled, and further action would be taken soon.

Replying to another question, the FIA director Sindh pledged eliminating and reducing corruption from banks, federal institutions, and corporations would also be his priority. He said slow processing of investigations discourages the complainants and expressed his intention to expedite conclusion of cases and to prevent the FIA officials from using delaying tactics so as to improve peoples' faith in the oranisation.

He said the FIA Karachi circle is working on various high profile cases in pending, including those against Shaheen Air, TDAP, PIA and others and all of them would be taken to their logical conclusion. He told the ‘Jang’ that from now all the investigations would have a timeline for conclusion. The Director FIA Sindh said the posting and transferred would be conducted on merit alone and in lines with the FIA's SOPs without entertaining someone's advocacy or any pressure.