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Altaf Hussain arrested in London on charges of money laundering Written Updates

The London Police had been investigating Hussain in this case for over several months now.

In a TV interview, Altaf had revealed that all his bank accounts in Britain had been frozen by the authorities. The MQM chief had admitted that the British authorities had conducted raids at his house and at his office.

2:40pm

MQM sources in Karachi say they are unable to contact the members of London office.

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2:37pm

British High Commission has confirmed the arrest. A special unit of the Scotland Yard arrested him from his house.

Exams have been postponed in various schools. Intermediate Board papers have also been cancelled.

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2:27pm

Scotland Yard has not revealed the identity of the man arrested, Express News reported. According to the their press release, a 60-year-old man has been arrested on charges of money-laundering.

Karachi University examinations have been cancelled for the day.

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2:22pm

Naeem Khanzada, reporting from Nine-Zero, says party members are gathering at the party headquarters for the emergency meeting.

MQM London Secretariat members say they will announce future course of action once the situation is clearer.

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2:15pm

Spokesperson for London Metropolitan Police told The Express Tribune that a 60-year-old man was arrested from North West London on suspicion of money laundering. He further said that they do not disclose identities till the person is charged.

MQM Rabita Committee will be addressing a press conference at 3pm.

Two MQM leaders have denied the arrest of their party chief.

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2:12pm

According to MQM leader Khawaja Izharul Hassan, the Rabita Committee has called for an emergency meeting and party members have started to gather at Nine Zero

Security has been put on high alert throughout Sindh.

Shops and businesses have started to shut down in Karachi and other cities of Sindh.

The British High Commission in Karachi has been temporarily shut down.

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2:00pm

MQM Rabita Committee member Aminul Haq says they will issue a statement regarding this and will inform everyone about the situation.

Karachi Stock Exchange dropped by 780 points as soon as the news of Hussain arrest broke out.  The market is now recovering.

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1:51pm

Hussain was arrested from his house in London’s Edgware area.

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 1:46pm

Javed Chaudhry, while speaking to Express News today, said London Police were investigating Hussain for three cases of money laundering, hate speech and Imran Farooq murder.

Background

In June last year, as part of their investigation into the Imran Farooq murder case, Scotland Yard had raided Altaf Hussain’s house in London. The search operation had continued for over 55 hours.

Later in July 2013, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police in London had told The Express Tribune that a significant amount of money was seized in the raid from the house of the MQM chief. However, the spokesperson did not disclose whether the politician is being questioned over it.

Another spokesperson had said that if a money laundering case is established, then it would be treated as a financial case, separate from the murder case of Dr Imran Farooq.

Farooq, 50, was a former leader of MQM and had lived in London in self-imposed exile from 1999. He was on his way back from work when he was attacked outside his home in Edgware, north London, in September 2010. A post-mortem gave the cause of death as multiple stab wounds and blunt trauma to the head. A kitchen knife and a house brick used in the attack were recovered at the scene

Economic survey 2013-14: Off target ishaq dar written updates

Though the gross domestic product (GDP) rate crawled up to 4.1% for the first time in the last six years, it fell short of the targeted rate of 4.4% for the fiscal year 2013-14. The country’s per capita income grew at a dismal 1.4% to $1,386 per person.

“We have missed the targets but we still achieved 75% to 80% of our goals against each target,” said the finance minister as he unveiled the Economic Survey of Pakistan for the fiscal year 2013-14.

Still, he pledged that the government would try to increase the growth rate by 1% every year taking it to 7% by 2017.

Interestingly, the confidence exuded by the finance minister last year over his economic revival plans following a dismal performance by the Pakistan Peoples Party government, did not translate into achieving targets that he had set for himself for the outgoing fiscal year.

The Economic Survey of Pakistan showed that the key indicator — the tax-to-GDP ratio — which has brought immense shame for the country due to a dismal performance, was again missed and stood at only 8.8%.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had promised to increase the ratio to 9.5% during the outgoing fiscal year. Similarly, the tax collection target was missed by a wide margin of Rs200 billion and the expected collection is now Rs2.275 trillion.

The government also missed the target of economic growth, investment and savings, the three core measures that depict the real health of the economy. The performance in investment, savings and sub-sectors of agriculture and services was even worse than that witnessed during the five year PPP government.

Commenting on missed targets, the finance minister said his government had set stretched targets in the first place to make sure all stakeholders give their 100% to improve the economy.

“In one year economic reforms cannot be completed and the economy cannot be revived within one year,” admitted Dar while responding to a question on his government’s inability to perform against their own declared indicators.

The investment to GDP ratio remained at 14% against a target of 15.1%. The ratio was below last year’s rate of 14.6%. Savings slipped to 12.9% against the target of 14%. Last year, the savings-to-GDP ratio was 13.5%.

Dar claimed that the first year was consumed in firefighting to help stabilise the economy. Despite the grim projection, he said real work on economic reforms will begin from the next fiscal year. Our efforts were focused to foil bids of those who wanted to see Pakistan a failed economic state, he added.

“Fiscal dominance over financing needs crowded out private sector investment,” according to the planning commission’s assessment. It added that a peculiar security situation and structural rigidities surrounding governance and regulatory environment led to missing investment targets.

But the government did manage to achieve this fiscal year’s budget deficit target of 5.8% of the GDP. Dar said the budget deficit in the next fiscal year will be brought down further by 1% of the GDP.

GDP

Against a target of 4.4%, the economy grew 4.1% in the current fiscal year. According to the finance minister, estimated economic losses due to load-shedding were 1.5% to 1.75%. He added that government recouped half of these losses in this fiscal year.

Except for industry, targets set for main sectors of the economy were also missed. The agriculture sector grew at 2.1%, far below the 3.8% target and last year’s growth rate of 2.9%. The industrial sector grew 5.8% against the target of 4.8%. The services sector grew 4.3%, which is below the target of 4.5% and even last year’s growth rate of 4.9%.

Dar said reduction in general services due to spending cuts led to missing the target in the services sector.

The government also missed its target for containing inflation at 8% that accelerated to 8.6% in the first ten months of the fiscal year. Dar said the IMF was of the view that inflation would run into double-digits but we have managed to restrict it to around 8.6%, despite increase in electricity tarriffs.

In order to show a growth of 4.3% in exports, the federal government took shipment figures. On the basis of proceeds, growth in exports was over 2%.

Dar said the current account deficit –measures by how much outflows exceed inflows – during first ten months remained at $2.2 billion. Dar said foreign investments during first ten months of the fiscal year remained at $2.8 billion including $2 billion raised by floating Euro bonds.

Until May 10, Dar said, the government’s borrowings had been reduced to Rs199.6 billion as against Rs992.9 billion of the comparative period. Instead of adding new debt, the government retired Rs10 billion of SBP borrowings.

The survey showed that the overall education situation slightly improved in the outgoing fiscal year while significant progress was made towards achieving better health outcomes. The population growth rate slightly declined to 1.95% in the outgoing fiscal year, it added.

shab e meraj ki ibadat in urdu May 2014