KARACHI: Custom Court Judge Syed Faiz Rasool Rashdi has declared proclaimed offender to the absconding accused namely Bashir Dawood and Mariyam Dawood who were booked in a case of concealment of income, furnishing inaccurate particulars of their income/ wealth and money laundering in an offshore company.
During the hearing, Investigation Officer Muhammad Arif appeared before the court and submitted that both the suspects have not been arrested yet. He further submitted that proceedings have been completed. After the hearing, the court declared both the accused as proclaimed offenders.
It needs to be mentioned here that the court had issued their bailable and non-bailable warrants several times and on the last date of hearing, the court had directed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for issuing red warrants against them.
Earlier, investigation officer had filed an application before the court for attachment of property and bank accounts under section 8 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010 in order to protect the public exchequer and also had informed the court that above named accused persons are absconders, therefore, court had allowed to IO for attachment of their bank accounts as case property for 30 days.
According to the prosecution, case no 01/2016 was registered against them alleging that the accused persons having offshore company and involved concealing the income approximately Rs9,870 million and amount of income tax sought to be evaded of Rs2, 469 million and amount of income tax recoverable (up to tax year 2014) Rs2, 467 million along with default surcharge & penalty to be determined at the time of payment.
Case was registered in violation of under section 111 (1) (d) (1) of the income tax ordinance 2001, liable to be prosecuted under section 192 ibid read with section 2 and 8 (2) of the AMP act 2010.