ISLAMABAD: Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) Chairman Zafar Hijazi was on Saturday remanded in the custody of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for four days by a judicial magistrate in Islamabad.
The FIA had pleaded to keep Hijazi in custody for a period of 10 days, which Hijazi’s counsel had contested. The counsel, Aazid Nafees, had argued that there was no need for Hijazi to be kept in FIA’s custody since he had already been investigated for over two months and because his health did not allow for him to be held in custody.
After reviewing Hijazi’s medical record, prepared by the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims), Judicial Magistrate Muhammad Shabbir turned Hijazi over to the FIA for four days.
Hijazi was taken from the court in an ambulance.
Hijazi had been taken into custody Friday after his interim bail expired. The FIA had registered a First Information Report against the SECP chairman under Sections 466 (forgery) and 471 (using forged documents as genuine) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), read with Section 5(2)(47) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, at the agency’s Special Investigation Unit (SIU) in Islamabad.
The case was registered on the orders of the Supreme Courtafter the three-member Panama Papers case implementation bench acted on a report prepared by a joint investigation team (JIT) probing the Sharif family’s financial history.
The JIT report had alleged that the SECP chairman had altered records related to the Sharif family owned Chaudhry Sugar Mills.
An investigation team headed by FIA Director Maqsoodul Hassan had subsequently investigated Hijazi and submitted a report on its investigation on July 8, stating that it had found the chairman guilty of altering records.
