Karachi welder finds Dubai estate to his name in possible new scam

KARACHI: After numerous instances reported of working-class people discovering millions of rupees' worth of suspicious deposits or fictitious bank accounts linking to them, a welder on Thursday was shocked to learn that there was property in Dubai registered under his name.

Imran, a welder by profession, found out about the estate he allegedly owns in Dubai after the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) issued him a notice and officials arrived seeking him at his residence.

He was deeply concerned — and worried — about this development but said he would donate the property to the Dam Fund, officially known as the Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand Dams Fund of the Supreme Court and Prime Minister of Pakistan, if it really was registered under his name.

"I'm a poor man. I haven't even seen the whole of Karachi, let alone go to Dubai," said Imran, a resident of Nishtar Road neighbourhood of the metropolis.

Imran lives in a small, kutcha house. "If I was unable to make a proper home for myself here in Karachi, how is it possible for me to own property in Dubai?"

Imran has appealed to Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar to take action against the FIA for serving the notice and "get me justice".

String of suspicious cases

A string of cases have been reported over the past couple of months wherein bizarre monetary discrepancies and discovery of fake accounts surfaced and people belonging to lower- and middle-class realised that they had millions of rupees in their bank accounts.

On August 6, the FIA found Rs8 billion in the bank account of Adnan Javed, a Karachi resident, who had deposited Rs5,000 to open three accounts under the title of a company, Lucky International, two years ago but never checked the balance in his account.

While he subsequently expressed a lack of knowledge about the huge sum, sources said Javed recorded statements with the FIA in Karachi and Islamabad, after which he was presented before the agency's director-general.

Then, on September 30, money worth Rs2 billion was found deposited in the bank account of Abdul Qadir, a vendor and resident of Orangi Town's Sector 8L, prompting action by the FIA and the Sindh Police.

Qadir, too, maintained no knowledge of the account and the funds in it and said he came to know about the funds through a summon letter from the FIA, adding that a few years back opened a bank account to buy a house in the Sarjani Town of the metropolis.

Just last month, on the other hand, a transaction worth Rs8.5 billion was discovered carried out from a rickshaw driver’s account. The FIA, already on a spree to clamp down on fake bank accounts involved in money laundering, sent a notice to the man, named Zor Talab Khan, on October 31.