Police team constituted to probe into Rs750m gold scam at Karachi bank

KARACHI: A police investigation team has been constituted to probe into a Rs750 million financial fraud scam by the private bank officials in Karachi, ARY News reported on Sunday.

Sources told ARY News that the investigation team will be headed by Deputy Superintendent Police (DIG) Investigation while its members include SIOs of Aziz Bhatti, Sachal and Sohrab Goth police stations. The other members include SIO Sharea Faisal and Bahadurabad while the investigation officers (IOs) of the cases were also part of the team.

The investigators have been given different tasks while East Zone Police will follow the cases at the banking court. The suspects will be produced before a banking court on Monday (tomorrow).

Overall 10 suspects have been arrested in connection with the two bank fraud cases registered at Sharea Faisal and Aziz Bhatti police stations, said sources.

READ: BANK STAFFERS SECRETLY REPLACE GOLD WITH ‘FAKE GOLD’ FROM LOCKERS IN KARACHI

The gold scam had exposed following the August 2 audit where the accused took illegal benefit of the bank’s scheme for providing loans against gold assets. The accused had shown original gold assets before the approval of the bank loans and later put fake gold assets in the lockers, the investigation officials revealed.

Earlier on August 6, a unique financial fraud had been unearthed in Karachi as the staffers secretly replaced gold assets of citizens with ‘fake gold’ in the lockers.

The revelations were made after the audit of a private bank’s branch in the Gulistan-e-Johar area of Karachi where the original gold assets of citizens to acquire loans were replaced with ‘fake gold’ by the bank staffers.

After the discovery, the management conducted the audit of one more suspected branch located in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal area that further exposed the plan of the defrauders.

It emerged that the bank staffers at Gulistan-e-Johar acquired a loan worth Rs24 million by giving gold assets as a guarantee for a fake customer. Alongside acquiring the loan, the staffers had secretly replaced the original gold with the fake gold.