Faryal Talpur has been placed under house arrest at her F8 address in Islamabad by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), and the residence has been declared as a sub-jail. The arrest was anticipated anytime during the day, as warrants were already issued in fake accounts’ case. Earlier this week, her brother and co-chairman of Pakistan People’s Party Asif Ali Zardari were also arrested by NAB after Islamabad High Court rejected their plea for bail. Chairman NAB Justice (R) Javed Iqbal issued the notification to declare her house as sub-jail.
The senior leadership of PPP is under trial over corruption charges including Sindh Assembly’ Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani. Other big fishes including Omni Group’s Anwer Majeed, his son Ghani Majeed, former chairperson of Pakistan Stock Exchange Hussain Lawai and Senior Vice President of Summit Bank Taha Raza are also nominated in fake accounts cases with the former President Zardari.
PPP members arranged demonstrations and protested against the arrest of Zardari this week while Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also shared his despair in the press conference. He harshly criticized the action by the government against PPP leadership. He claimed that the weak government is scared of criticism made by the opposition.
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) formed to investigate the money laundering case through fake accounts identified the involvement of over 11,500 bank accounts. The team marked 59 Suspected Transaction Reports (STR) and 24,500 Cash Transaction Reports. That implies the exchanges were hailed as suspicious. The case relates to suspicious exchanges worth Rs4.4 billion supposedly helped out through an invented ledger. As per the prosecution, the record titled M/s A One International was phony and it got a total of Rs4.4 billion out of which Rs30 million was paid to the Zardari Group at two distinct occasions.