FIA grills senior CAA official in pilot licenses scam    

KARACHI: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has expanded the sphere of investigations in suspicious licenses of pilots and interrogated a senior official of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), ARY NEWS reported.

According to sources privy to the matter, the corporate crime circle of the FIA interrogated the Senior Additional Director (IT) Tahir Umar besides also spending two days in the IT sector of the CAA.

“Besides grilling Tahir Umar, other officials in the CAA were also interrogated during the two days,” they said.

The agency has decided to take help from cybercrime experts to examine the computers and their system login passwords besides also scrutinizing the computers used for pilots’ examinations and issuance of licenses.

The forensic audit would determine the officers who had a role in the entire scam. “An action will be taken against the officers and staffers involved in the pilot licenses scam,” they said as some of the CAA officers and staffers are already under arrest over their alleged role in the entire scam.

It is pertinent to mention here that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in February has claimed to unearth a network -comprising of its employees and some pilots- allegedly involved in the fake pilots’ licenses scam.

According to sources, the CAA is carrying out raids for two accused allegedly involved in the scam after it has emerged that some of the aviation employees were using their frontmen to collect money for the fake licenses.

They said that license branch employees allegedly received hundreds of thousands of rupees from each pilot for a paper and in return, another person was allowed to sit in place of the pilot.

“The CAA has acquired remand of some of the license branch officials and pilots,” they said adding that the span of the investigations has been expanded.