ISLAMABAD: A homeless person in Lahore held two accounts with combined balance running around four billion rupees in a Swiss Bank. Muhammad Javed has never travelled abroad. He neither had an account in a Pakistani bank, nor registered himself with the Federal Board of Revenue for tax payment.
Unbelievable? Yes, but it has been duly verified that the accounts were opened in his name. It has established yet another point that the practice of fake accounts is not limited to Pakistan, Swiss banks have also done that. At least in this case.
Javed was barely 26 when the first corporate account was opened in his name at Credit Suisse in 2003. He was then a factory worker earning hardly between Rs200 to Rs300 per day. By then, he didn’t even have a passport which is required to open an account abroad.
This account reached a maximum balance of Rs3.4 billion in 2005 just a week before Javed obtained his first passport for which he registered himself to go to Malaysia for better earnings prospects. Javed couldn’t go there because he didn’t have Rs150,000 which the agent had demanded. He never had his passport renewed afterward.
Second account at Credit Suisse was also opened before he registered for passport. This account received Rs401 million in 2006, according to the leaked data of the bank initially shared by a whistleblower with a German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, which coordinated it with Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and 46 other media organizations. Both accounts were closed in 2006.
The disclosure of having accounts was as much a surprise for Javed as it was for anybody else. Javed doesn’t know who did that using his identity. “Had I had accounts [in Swiss bank] I would not have been living at this sewage drain. Instead, I would have been living in an upscale community like DHA,” he said talking to The News at the rubble of his slum which has been razed to ground by Lahore Development Authority.
His slum was situated in Gulberg Lahore next to sewage drains which stink 24/7. Javed’s family has been living there since 1947 when his grandfather migrated from Jammu. Months ago, the slums were demolished by LDA. “They (city administration) came here four months back with full force. They gave us ten-minute to pull out our luggage. We said give us proper notice. This is not the way to demolish our houses. They were adamant. We managed to pull out some luggage. Part of luggage was also buried under the rubble,” he said.
Javed’s two brothers have moved to a rented place but he continues to live there under the roof together with his mother. He said he couldn’t move because he doesn’t have money to pay rent. When The News asked Javed’s mother whether she was aware of her son's Swiss accounts, she burst into tears and glanced around the rubble of her slums.
He doesn’t have money to feed himself, she said, let alone opening the bank account abroad. Had we had money, we would have made a big house like them, she said pointing towards the mansions located 20-feet away from there and owned by two political families. There is a single road between the slums and those houses. “Had we made money through illicit means like many others, we would have been living a princely life. We had six rooms [where four families lived]. We built them with our hard-earned money. Now they have been reduced it to rubble,” said Parveen Akhtar, Javed’s mother.
You say Javed had bank accounts, she continued. His wife is pregnant and he doesn’t have money to take her to hospital, she said. His (Javed’s) mother-in-law is affording the expenses of treatment. “I’m diabetic. I have a heart issue. I have a blood pressure issue. You can see wounds on my feet due to diabetes. I sell flowers to buy medicine. How can I put my burden on Javed who I couldn’t provide education. He doesn’t have money to feed himself. How will he afford my expenses? I can’t be a burden on other sons who are barely managing their rents,” she said.
The News can say with authority after confirmation through different knowledgeable sources that there is only one Muhammad Javed born on the date and year mentioned in the Swiss bank’s leaked record. He was born in November 1977. How his identity was used remained a mystery. The News spoke to a former banker who handled offshore accounts of Pakistani clients of Standard Chartered.
He said the cases of identity theft are common in international private banking. “Normally, this practice is done with the consent of the Relationship Manager and the client who wants to park his funds under someone else’s name but wants to control the transactions himself,” he said speaking on the condition of anonymity. As the head of the team, the former banker said, he would not have access to the passport details unless shared by the relationship manager.
However, he said the account couldn’t have been opened without a passport which is an added complication in the case of Javed’s stolen identity as Javed said he didn’t have the passport until nearly two years after the first account was opened. He didn’t give this to anybody ever, hence clueless how his identity was used. Credit Suisse didn’t respond when OCCRP sent its questions on behalf of the media partners.
