Accountability court extends judicial remand of accused in bike scam

KARACHI: An accountability court hearing MNM motorbike scandal extended judicial remand of 20 accused for 14 days, ARY News reported on Monday.

The court ordered production of the accused in the next hearing of the case on August 05.

Investigation officer of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) submitted its report in the court.

NAB prosecutor informed the court that the bureau has arrested 68 accused in the mega scandal so far. The accused were working as stockists, which helped to plunder billions of rupees public money.

The accused were charged of assisting main accused Muhammad Ahmed Sial to plunder billions of rupees from general public.

NAB had filed a corruption reference against accused in a case of Rs11 billion scam of motorcycles.

According to the accountability bureau, M/s MNM (Pvt) Ltd CEO Muhammad Ahmed Sial along with others deprived more than 11,000 people of their hard-earned money on the promise of providing them new motorcycles (each against Rs25,000).

It said prime accused Muhammad Ahmad Sial got MNM (Pvt) Ltd registered with the Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) in February 2017. The company was actually authorised to do the business of import and export of motorcycles’ spare parts. Afterwards it violated its memorandum clause and started collecting huge investments dishonestly by promising sale of motorcycles and misappropriated more than Rs10 billion.

The SECP referred a complaint to the NAB Lahore in August 2017. During the course of investigation it was revealed that the accused expanded business nationwide through hiring of more than 271 stockists.

The NAB said it attached all known properties and bank accounts of the accused and a total of 39 suspects were arrested.

More than 11,000 affected people approached the NAB Lahore with their claims amounting to Rs17 billion. Among them verified claims turned out to be Rs10.7bn.