KARACHI: Zor Talab Khan, alleged proprietor of Salar Enterprises and Salar Mining Enterprises submitted property documents as surety of Rs2,000,000 before the customs court, who was using benami six accounts to conduct business and evaded taxes of more than Rs1 billion and also involved in money laundering.
On May 18, 2019, counsel for the suspect disclosed that his client Zor Talab Khan is private school teacher and his friends used his ID card for opening bank accounts and fake companies for money laundering and his client had nothing to do with these transactions. He further argued that his client is poor man and has not enough money to submit as surety, therefore, he is submitting house property as surety.
After the hearing, court sent property to concerned department for verification and directed offices that after verification, documents be approved and granted pre-arrest bail to him.
Earlier, investigation officer had submitted first information report against suspects namely Zor Talab Khan, Umara Khan, Muhammad Hassan and Muhammad Hamza and informed that six bank accounts were opened by suspect Zor Talab Khan during June 14, 2012 to July 13, 2017 and Rs8.497 billion amount transited and when prosecution issued notice to suspect Zor Talab Khan than he replied that he was totally unaware of the bank accounts and these bank accounts were being used by his three friends and these people obtained his CNIC under some pretext and opened these accounts and conducted these transactions and he was never told that they are illegally using these bank accounts for evading taxes.
He further submitted that during the investigation, the above-mentioned suspects have obtained tax exemption certificates from deputy commissioner Buner which is a provincially administered tribal area and hence a tax free area with the totally unrelated counter parties, multiple transactions have been done with totally irrelevant parties such as paint shop, transporter, oil business, spare parts, scrap business and electrics goods etc, which indicate that marble business registration and fake exemption certificates are only smokescreen from tax evasion by doing non-declared business and by using these benami accounts.
He further disclosed that above-mentioned suspects have caused a loss to government exchequer worth Rs1,261,104,196 by willfully commissioning offences of concealment of income, acquiring assets from proceeds of crime as defined in section 2 (Q) of Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010 by committing predicate offence of tax evasion as defined in Section 2 (s) of Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2010.