January 29, 2010, Source: The Nation
Sindh High Court on Thursday ordered the reopening of the fraud case against Haji Abdul Razzak Yaqoob, head of the ARY International Money Exchange Group based in Dubai and Hussain Lawai, President of Arif Habib Bank for transferring 10m US dollars abroad.
The direction was issued by division bench of SHC comprising Justice Gulzar Ahmed and Irfan Saadat Khan after hearing the arguments from the counsels in petition moved by Muslim Commercial Bank (MCB). The petitioner sought proceedings against cheating and forgery for recovery of $10 million. The case has been in pending in the Banking Court since 1997, long before promulgation of NRO. The petitioner submitted that in 1995 on the verbal direction of Hussain Lawai who was then chief executive of MCB, two loans worth $10m were provided to ARY International Money Exchange Dubai.
In 1997 the criminal cases were registered against Haji Razzak and Lawai but the former had won a stay from the apex court, and since then, almost thirteen years, these cases were in pending without proper proceedings.
“After promulgation of NRO, the ARY group head approached to set-aside the cases against him as, according to him, he was politically victimized,” the plaintiff submitted, adding that the Review Board set-aside the cases against him without hearing MCB’s comments in this connection.
But the alleged defaulter has had no affiliation with any political party nor he was a political activist, so how he could be politically victimised, argued Khalid Anwar while counselling on behalf of the plaintiff. He said that though Supreme Court has abolished NRO, yet the cases against him have not been reopened in the banking court. Moreover both the alleged defaulters were provided opportunity in NRO.