Pakistan Fake Bank Accounts
Pakistan: Homeless person had Rs 4 billion in Swiss bank
Islamabad: An episode of fake accounts operating in Pakistan became evident from the fact that the name of a homeless person in Lahore recently emerged who held two accounts with a combined balance running around four billion rupees in a Swiss Bank.
Muhammad Javed did not travel abroad ever.
The homeless Pakistani national neither had an account in a Pakistani bank, nor registered himself with the Federal Board of Revenue for tax payment.
It has been duly verified that the accounts were opened in his name. It has established yet another point that the practice of fake accounts is not limited to Pakistan, Swiss banks have also done that. At least in this case, reports The News International.
Javed was barely 26 when the first corporate account was opened in his name at Credit Suisse in 2003. He was then a factory worker earning hardly between Rs 200 to Rs 300 per day. By then, he didn’t even have a passport which is required to open an account abroad.
This account reached a maximum balance of Rs 3.4 billion in 2005 just a week before Javed obtained his first passport for which he registered himself to go to Malaysia for better earnings prospects.
Javed couldn’t go there because he didn’t have Rs 150,000 which the agent had demanded. He never had his passport renewed afterwards, the Pak newspaper reported.
Second account at Credit Suisse was also opened before he registered for passport.
This account received Rs 401 million in 2006, according to the leaked data of the bank initially shared by a whistleblower with a German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, which coordinated it with Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and 46 other media organizations.
Both accounts were closed in 2006, the newspaper reported.
Javed said he had no idea how it all happened.
“Had I had accounts [in Swiss bank] I would not have been living at this sewage drain. Instead, I would have been living in an upscale community like DHA,” he said talking to The News at the rubble of his slum which has been razed to ground by Lahore Development Authority.
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