ISLAMABAD  -  Pakistani emigrants, recently de­tained by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for staying illegally in Tel Aviv, made a total 108 money transactions of worth over 11 mil­lion rupees from Israel to Pakistan, reveals the investigation report.

The FIA probe has unearthed that the accused made money transac­tions of Rs 11,300,000 from Israel to the General Post Office (GPO) in Mir­purkhas, Sindh. The agency has ap­proached GPO Hyderabad and GPO Mirpurkhas to obtain records related to the transactions from Israel. Fur­thermore, the other parties involved in these financial transactions are also being examined, a spokesperson of FIA said. Pakistan Post is already under the scanner of law enforcement agencies for the last few years to fulfil the requirements of the Financial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF). Pakistan suc­ceeded to get its name off the global anti-money laundering watchdog’s grey list in October last year.

During the course of investigation launched by FIA, it also transpired that apart from the accused persons nominated in all five cases, some of their other relatives have also visit­ed Israel. The agency has shared such data with its Integrated Border Man­agement System (IBMS) to obtain the complete travel histories of families of the accused persons. Earlier this week, the country’ s premier investi­gation agency had arrested five Paki­stanis on charges of staying in Israel illegally in violation of different sec­tions of the Passport Act 1974 and Emigration Ordinance 1979. The FIA’s Mirpurkhas Crime Circle had regis­tered five FIRs against eight suspects, all of whom were allegedly working in Tel Aviv as helpers or car washers.

The spokesperson said that trav­el histories of the accused persons were being obtained. In this regard, FIA has approached all concerned air­lines including Pakistan Internation­al Airlines (PIA), Emirates, Qatar Air­ways, and Etihad Airways to obtain records related to the tickets booked by the accused. The embassies of Ken­ya, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and United Arab Emirates have been approached through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) to obtain the records related to the visas issued to the accused.

All accused are presently in judicial custody at Central Jail Mirpurkhas. FIA had identified the accused as No­man Siddiqui, Kamil Anwar, Kamran Siddiqui, Muhammad Zeshan and Muhammad Anwar and all belonged to Mirpurkhas. As part of its foreign policy, Pakistan does not recognize Israel as a state and does not allow its citizens to travel to Israel. To pro­hibit its citizens from visiting or stay­ing in the country, the green pass­port specifically mentions that it is valid for travelling to all countries of the world except Israel.