ISLAMABAD: In a recent case registered against Jehangir Tareen, the FIA has accused the once close friend and troubleshooter of Prime Minister Imran Khan of money laundering. Tareen is being investigated for remitting US$7.4 million to the UK for the purchase of properties there.
The FIA has registered several FIRs against Tareen and his businesses. One of these FIRs alleged that during 2011-12, when “fraudulent investments” were being pumped into the Farooq Pulp Mills Limited (FPML) accounts, Jehangir Tareen, his son Ali Khan Tareen and other family members each purchased US dollars from the open market in Lahore in a ‘structured’ manner – that is, keeping each transaction below the Financial Monitoring Unit’s reporting threshold of US$35,000 to avoid detection.
“Subsequently, in 2016, Ali Khan Tareen remitted approx. US$7.4 million to the UK for the purchase of properties (to be investigated in detail during the course of investigation) which makes them liable for an Anti-Money Laundering investigation (3/4 AMLA 2010),” reads the FIR registered on March 22. A government source claimed that the FBR is already looking into the case and has served Tareen with a notice for the payment of Rs1.4 billion. Against this notice, it is said that Jehangir Tareen has got a stay order from a court of law.
It is said that the London properties have been declared in an amnesty scheme but the FBR claims that being ‘a politically exposed person’, Tareen and his family were ineligible to benefit from such a scheme. The amnesty scheme facility, it is said, was availed by Jehangir Tareen’s son Ali Tareen.
According to one of the FIRs, an alleged fraudulent and premeditated scheme of misappropriation of public shareholders’ money by JKT has surfaced whereby JDW (JKD’s public limited company) transferred Rs3.4bn to an associated private company, FPML Gujrat, owned by his son and close relatives.
“The transfers, especially after FY-2011/12, were patently fraudulent investments, which ultimately translated into personal gains for the family members of the CEO JDW,” the FIR alleged.
It added that without any business activity by FPML, JKT kept transferring JDW’s funds to the FPML and by the end of 2015 had transferred an additional Rs1.10 billion to the FPML. According to the FIA, the transfer of funds by JDW into FPML was “fraudulent ab-initio” because the JDW subsequently booked all its advances and investments as “impairment loss”.
It said: “Despite the FPML plant closure of FY-2011/12, recording of JDW’s investments of 2009/10 as impairment loss was delayed by design to 2015 so that additional JDW funds could be pumped into FPML (until 2015) which was not doing any business.”
In another FIR registered against Jehangir Tareen and his business, the FIA claimed to have allegedly uncovered a “premediated scheme” of misappropriation of public shareholders’ money by Tareen under which voluminous withdrawals amounting to at least Rs2.2 billion from the account of JDW (from Oct 2017 to March 2020) were fraudulently made through a trusted cash-rider Amir Waris, who is employed as cashier in JDW’s corporate head office, Lahore.
The FIR also talked about a fake account unearthed with an aggregate credit deposit of Rs5.8 billion from extraneous sources (2008 to 2013) closely associated in making credit transactions to the JK Farming Ltd (Rs26 million), JK Dairies Pvt Ltd (Rs25m) and AFT Mango/Ali Tareen Farms (Rs14m).
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