ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Finance has raised doubts over whether the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has been concealing certain facts regarding alleged corruption and money laundering in the Multan Metro Bus case.
Senator Saleem Mandviwala, chairman of the committee, expressed his displeasure in a letter written to the SECP, berating them for delaying their response to queries put forward by the Senate body and for deliberately concealing relevant details which the committee had asked for.
“Irrelevant papers have been enclosed but not those asked for by the committee,” stated the letter, referring to a 200-page reply which the SECP had submitted to the committee.
The alleged Multan Metro Bus corruption case was referred to the SECP by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) in December 2016, but the commission had remained secretive over the matter for a long time. The details had not even been shared with the Ministry of Finance by the now-suspended SECP chairman Zafar Hijazi.
The matter came to the fore during investigations against Chinese company Jiangsu Yabaite Technology Co. Ltd (Yabaite), which is listed at the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, China. The CSRC had noted undue foreign inflows in its accounts.
Yabaite had told the Chinese regulator that it had received the amount after completing some work on the Metro Bus project in Multan, and the CSRC had approached the SECP in December 2016 seeking assistance in obtaining information and certain documents.
