Practice · 02
Anti-money laundering & white-collar crime.
Prosecution and defence under the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010 (Act VII of 2010), in which the firm's principal has served as Special Public Prosecutor since 17th August 2017; seizure and freezing proceedings, commercial fraud, and compliance advice to the institutions the Act obliges.
The practice
Both sides of
the same statute.
The firm has prosecuted money laundering for the state and defended it for the accused, and holds that the two duties sharpen each other: the prosecutor who knows how a defence is built pleads the reference more carefully, and the defender who has carried the burden of proof knows precisely where it fails. Since a charge of money laundering depends upon a determined predicate offence, therefore the practice runs through the customs, tax and corruption matters from which the "proceeds of crime" are said to arise.
The chambers' references of money laundering in the Rawalpindi customs court, filed in matters reported by the national press, have concerned sums running to billions of Rupees; the same appointment carried Pakistan's prosecution record before the Financial Action Task Force on-site visit.
The matters in the pressIn the courts
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2017 · present
Prosecution
Special Public Prosecutor under the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010 since 17th August 2017: references in the customs courts, including the solar panel imports investigation and the gold smuggling references reported by the national press, and the Chaudhry Sugar Mills matter.
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Defence
Defence
Defence of persons and companies charged under the Act of 2010 and the predicate statutes: customs and currency offences, corruption references, bidding fraud and commercial fraud.
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Assets
Seizure & freezing
Currency and asset seizure proceedings, freezing and attachment of property under the Act of 2010, and the recovery and release applications that follow them.
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High Court
Appellate work
Appeals and writ petitions arising from laundering and predicate proceedings, including the Ayaan Ali currency-smuggling matter for the FBR before the Honourable Islamabad High Court.
Advisory & training
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Compliance
Institutional compliance
Advice on the obligations the Act imposes on a reporting person: the "Suspicious Transaction Report" and the "Currency Transaction Report", targeted financial sanctions and screening, and the duties of the "DNFBP" and its "Self-Regulatory Body".
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FATF
International standards
Representation of the Government of Pakistan through FBR and Pakistan Customs before the Financial Action Task Force on-site visit on prosecution regimes under anti-money laundering law.
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Training
Judicial & agency training
Trainings at the Federal Judicial Academy, Islamabad, to District and Additional Sessions Judges, UNODC officials and law enforcement agencies on money laundering, terrorist financing and commercial fraud; extensive training on terrorist financing and money laundering to the judges of the Special Courts throughout Pakistan, from Karachi and Hyderabad to Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Islamabad, and to the Special Investigation Unit of the Federal Investigation Agency; Letter of Appreciation of the Director General, FIA, 2nd January 2012.
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Writing
The books
Combating Money Laundering in Pakistan (2011) and the PILDAT comparative study of the region's anti-money laundering legislations (2008), with a weekly article in the firm's journal.
Selected matters
Two laundering
prosecutions.
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Special Judge Customs and Taxation, Rawalpindi · 2021
Gold exported under the self-consignment scheme, and proceeds never repatriated
Conducted as Special Public Prosecutor for the Directorate of Intelligence and Investigation (Customs). More than a tonne of gold, worth in excess of sixteen million US Dollars, was exported to the United Arab Emirates under the self-consignment scheme, and neither the gold nor its sale proceeds ever came back; the exporter had meanwhile incorporated a company and opened a bank account in Dubai which he disclosed to nobody in Pakistan. The charge lay under Sections 3 and 4 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010, on the predicate of Sections 2(s) and 16 of the Customs Act, 1969 as a Schedule offence, with permission to investigate taken under Section 21 of the Act of 2010. What makes the complaint worth describing is its reach beyond the exporter: it pleaded the case against the bank officials who issued thirty-two Forms "E" across four years while the proceeds went unrealised, and against the clearing agents who, under the Customs Clearing Agent Licensing Rules, 2001, were under a known legal duty to report a suspicious transaction and did not. Judgement is not reported, therefore no outcome is stated.
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Special Judge Customs and Taxation, Rawalpindi · 2023
Currency carried to the Gulf on a forged conversion receipt
A small prosecution, and for that reason the clearest statement of how the Act of 2010 is proved. Forty thousand US Dollars left Islamabad for Dubai and were declared to the customs authority on arrival, so the money left Pakistan without a trace and surfaced abroad; the conversion receipt produced to the customs authorities, and again before the Customs Appellate Tribunal, was cross-verified with the company said to have issued it and found never to have existed. Since the transfer authorisation was in any event not endorsed on the passport by an "Authorised Dealer", therefore the export of the currency was unlawful on its face and the source of the money fell to be proved as proceeds of crime without any need to trace it further. The matter is pending.
Both matters are described without identifying any accused person. They are prosecution files. The chambers also defend under the same Act, and a conflicts check precedes every instruction on either side.
Instruct the chambers.
Enquiries in anti-money laundering and white-collar matters are answered from Islamabad.
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