Daily Times

Sir: Prosecution was aghast when defence lawyer asked whether opening a fake account constitutes a criminal charge. The Zardari-Faryal-Talpur case is being investigated since 2003. Yet, prosecution is banking on harassment of innocent witnesses (according to media reports).

Our prosecutors should learn to connect the dots and build a hard-bound case. Financial offenders are clever or commit offences with help of clever lawyers. Take India for example.

Diamond merchant Mehul Choksi’s cousin Nirav Modi is a specialist in acquisitions and disposals of corporate vehicles which primarily own and manage an underlying real estate asset. He built up an expertise in acting on private mergers, acquisitions and disposals in the children’s nurseries, dental practices and other sectors.

He complicated India’s discussions with British authorities on the case by raising issues on data protection, claimed political asylum in Britain, so on. His uncle Mehul Choksi obtained citizenship of the Caribbean island of Antigua.

India sent three letters to the U.K. seeking assistance in its investigation against Mr. Modi in March and April. The letters have been forwarded to the Serious Fraud Office, without avail. What was Choksi and his companies’ modus operandi?

He availed credit from overseas branches of Indian banks using the fraudulent guarantees of Punjab National Bank (PNB) given through letters of undertaking (LoUs) and letters of credit issued by the Brady House branch which were not repaid, bringing liability on the state-run bank. An LoU is a guarantee given by an issuing bank to Indian banks having branches abroad to grant short-term credit to the applicant. Mehul Choksi, architect of Rs 14,000 crore bank fraud, was “using several dummy companies” to rotate funds and to divert money for his personal use.

In the PNB fraud case, the bank employees had sent these guarantees (unauthorized letters of undertakings in the absence of credit limits and collateral security).

It is doubtful if our NAB or FIA have acumen to understand offenders’ tricks, intricacies of foreign prosecution, and extradition treaties. We lose cases even after paying hefty fees to international and home-grown media-savvy lawyers.

DEEBA MALIK

Islamabad

Published in Daily Times, September 16^th 2018.