Two suspects involved in hawala transactions held in FIA raid

KARACHI: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has claimed to have arrested two suspects involved in the illegal business of ‘hundi and hawala’ in Karachi.

According to the sources, the FIA State Bank circle team, on a tip-off conducted a raid at an office in Pakistan Employees Cooperative Housing Society (PECHS) and arrested two suspects.

During the raid, Rs 750,000 cash, mobile phones, checkbooks, telegraphic transfers (TTs) and other articles were recovered from them, sources added.

An official of FIA said that the suspects were running the illegal business under cover of an import and export company. Those arrested were identified as Arshad alias Dumba and Danish.

On July 12, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had carried out a raid in Karachi’s Saddar area and arrested two men. The officials had seized a huge quantity of money including foreign currency and gold, officials and sources said.

The official said two persons, identified as Zain and Adnan, were detained, adding that they were allegedly engaged in sending “illegal remittance abroad under the cover of sale of gold”.

It is worth mentioning here that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had repeatedly warned of strict action against the illegal foreign exchange operator. The SBP said that the bank will crackdown on illegal money changer, hundi and hawala operators across the country.

The SBP said that only banks and authorized dealers were allowed to do foreign currency business with the public.