FAISALABAD: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has detected another private company—FMG Global—which allegedly got millions of rupees from the general public illegally in the name of investment.

The agency raided the FMG Global office on Saturday evening and arrested three persons including Ishtiaq Ahmed, franchise owner of FMG Global, its Chief Executive Officer Faizan Asghar. A case was registered against them besides the company’s other owners and directors.

Mr Zaidi said Rs3,47,000, fake stamp papers, fake notary public stamps, five laptops and cash receipts had been recovered from the FMG office.

A similar raid was conducted on a company—MNM— a couple of days ago and an investigation had revealed that the company had received Rs1.25bn from people.

FIA Deputy Director Ali Imam Zaidi said two offices of the MNM had been raided and their record showed that the company had fleeced the general public of Rs1.25bn and the people had started launching complaints against its officials. He said the FIA had requested more than two dozen banks to give details of the accounts of the two companies and to freeze them. He said the banks had been contacted so that the owners could not flee from the country with the public money. However, he said it seemed that both companies had been keeping cash with them rather depositing with the banks.

Both the companies had also been receiving deposits from the general public in the name of investment. They said any man investing Rs25,500 with them would get a motorcycle after 45 days. If the investor would opt for a motorcycle, the company would give him Rs36,000 cash. Their agents were being paid Rs2,000 per motorcycle. Attractive packages were also being offered by the companies to the investors who wanted to open new branch.

Mr Zaidi alleged that both the companies had been running illegal businesses without surrendering any kind of security to the government which could compensate the ‘investors’ in case the companies defaulted or its incumbents escaped. He said the people attached with the companies claimed they had been doing the business legally like other motorcycle companies.

“However, the other companies had their assets in Pakistan in the form of their factories machinery, land, bank accounts and security deposits with the government. The masses must verify the legal status of the companies before making any kind of investment.”

He said the FIA had already obtained physical remand for the persons related to the MNM and the court would be approached for the remand of the FMG’s officials.

During arguments in the court of a magistrate, the counsel for the MNM claimed that the company was doing a lawful business after taking licence from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and its officials and owners were taxpayers to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). It was accredited with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the FIA had illegally raided its office and arrested its officials without any reasonable cause.

The investigation officer of the case rejected the claims of the counsel and stated that many complainants had approached him with the applications against the company and the FIA had recorded their statements. He said he had also recorded the statement of the senior executive officer of the SECP who stated that the company had declared that it would not launch multilevel marketing, pyramid and Ponzi scheme or related activities or business or any lottery business. The SECP official had also recommended legal action against them, the investigation officer told the judge.

At this, the judge had granted the FIA physical remand of the suspects.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2017