Key witness in fake accounts case against Asif Zardari dies of cardiac arrest

The fake accounts case against former President Asif Ali Zardari took a new turn after a key witness of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in the case passed away due to cardiac arrest on Monday.

According to NAB sources, Aslam Masood was undergoing treatment at a hospital in Rawalpindi where he lost the battle against the heart ailment.

Masood had become an approver in the multi-billion rupee money-laundering case filed against top PPP leaders including former president Asif Zardari and her sister Faryal Talpur.

Meanwhile, the superintendent of Adiala Jail has submitted a report of Masood's death to the accountability court, according to which, he was admitted to the hospital on February 20, 2019.

“Unfortunately, the prisoner died of cardiac arrest in the hospital today (Monday),” the report stated and sought permission from the court for the postmortem of the diseased.

Masood, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Omni Group, was arrested through Interpol when he was boarding a flight from London to Jeddah in October 2018. He was subsequently extradited to Pakistan from Saudi Arabia in February 2019.

What is the fake bank accounts case all about?

In October 2015, the anti-corruption wing of the Federal Investigation Agency(FIA) in Karachi received a tip-off of suspicious intra-bank transactions from the Summit Bank, Sindh Bank, and the United Bank Limited. 

The profiles of the account holders did not match their earnings/income. FIA authorities suspected that these accounts were being run by the Zardari Group and Omni Group, amongst others.

The case dragged on until June 2018, when the Supreme Court took suo moto notice of the fake accounts and directed a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the matter.

Read more: Faryal Talpur approaches IHC to challenge order freezing her bank accounts

The JIT found that 32 fake bank accounts were being operated by 11 fake entities to launder money from “kickbacks, land grabbing, and large scale misappropriation of public funds.”

There are 24 accused, according to the JIT, who operated, benefited, and abetted the transactions including former president Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur.

How is the Omni Group involved?

According to the JIT, a major beneficiary of the fake accounts transactions was the Karachi-based Omni Group. The Group, says the JIT, had a “startling and unprecedented (abnormal) growth 2009 onwards,” interestingly, after the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) took power.

From 2008 to 2013, the company grew at a whopping 2,500% and added a total of 83 companies under its umbrella. The growth percentage fell to 142 percent after 2013 when the PPP lost the central government.