LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Lahore on Friday wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSE), requesting them to provide complete details of a business deal and a share transaction by a company named M/s Azgard Nine Limited, whose director Ali Jahangir Siddiqui is an aide to the prime minister and the ambassador-designate to the United States.
A combined investigation team of NAB Lahore has also summoned Mr Siddiqui on March 22, to record his statement in a probe against the affairs of M/s Azgard Nine Limited (ANL).
In this particular case NAB is probing the siphoning off of funds amounting to 23.7 million euros in 2008, used to purchase an Italian Company – Monte Bello SRL. A foreign company ‘Fairtal’ SRL, Sweden was used for the deal which suffered losses along with its shareholders. There are also allegations that shares of a company named Agritech Limited were sold to various financial and government institutions at a price higher than the market rate to settle loan defaults. This resulted in a loss of Rs40bn to various financial and government institutions, the NAB case says.
“The Lahore NAB has written to the SECP and PSE to provide case records of these two matters of the company at the earliest,” an official source said, adding that the bureau had initiated a probe against Mr Siddiqui and other directors of ANL on a private complaint. He said NAB was keen to look into the investigation already carried out by the SECP in this case almost 10 years ago.
The SECP had launched an investigation against ANL for alleged involvement in manipulative and prohibitive activities in 2007-08. According to the SECP’s investigation “during the review period (2007-08), the ANL indulged in active manipulative trading”.
