ISLAMABAD: National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) President Saeed Ahmed has written to the Supreme Court alleging that some members of the joint investigation team (JIT) probing the prime minister’s family for their overseas business dealings had been mistreating him.
Ahmed’s letter, addressed to the SC registrar, alleges that the behaviour of some JIT members towards him was ‘threatening and authoritative’. “I felt that during questioning, I was insulted, threatened and subjected to undue pressure,” the NBP president alleged. He also complained about being made to wait before he appeared for his session with the JIT. “I was at the Judicial Academy for 12 hours. The long wait during appearances and particularly the first five-hour wait was very unnerving,” he complained.
“I do realise that I was there for a criminal investigation as a witness but it seems I was being punished as a condemned person,” Ahmed added.
Saeed Ahmed has been summoned by the JIT due to his involvement in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case, which the JIT is examining as part of its probe into the Sharif family’s murky business dealings abroad.
Ahmed’s name had come into the national limelight when, after the Musharraf coup in 1998, current Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had declared him a ‘close friend’ and claimed that Ahmed’s accounts had been used to ‘handle’ the Sharif family’s finances. “The previously opened foreign currency accounts of Saeed Ahmed, one of the former directors of FHMC and a close friend of mine, and of Mussa Ghani, the nephew of my wife, were also used to deposit huge foreign currency funds provided by the Sharif family to offer them as collateral to obtain different and indirect credit lines,” Dar had said in his confession in the Hudaibiya case.
However, Dar later disowned his confessions and said his statement was taken under duress.
Currently, Ahmed is serving as the president and chief executive officer of the state-run National Bank of Pakistan. He was appointed after the Ministry of Finance recommended his name, along with two others, for the post. He has also worked on senior positions in various institutions, including the State Bank of Pakistan, where he last worked as deputy governor.
Earlier, the prime minister’s elder son, Hussain Nawaz, had approached the SC raising objections against two members of the JIT. He had expressed apprehensions that the presence of these officers may affect the fairness and impartiality of the JIT and its findings.
