Five held for making fake papers for insurance claims

Shahid Aslam

FIA busted a group of five people of an insurance company allegedly involved in preparing fake and forged documents, bogus bank statements, fake claims and bogus premiums to earn millions of rupees from the reinsurance companies on the basis of fake claims of their own customers.

On a tip-off, a joint team of FIA National Response Centre for Cyber Crime (NR3C) comprising Additional Director, FIA, Jamil Ahmed Khan Mayo, Ghulam, Murtaza Bajwa, Sub-Inspector, Mian Muhammad Jamil, ASI, Sohail Shehzad, ASI and Muhammad Irshad and an FIA technical team conducted a raid at Silver Star House, 5-Bank Square Lahore on Thursday.

The FIA team arrested Abdul Ghaffar Shah, Head of Underwriting Department, Tanvir Ahmed Alvi, CFO, Muhammad Irfan Younis, Head of IT Department, Muhammad Sajjad, Head of Reinsurance Department and Shahid Kamboh, Assistant Manager from the spot on the charges of preparing fake/bogus documents for insurance claims.

The FIA registered FIR (50/15) under sections 406, 409, 420, 467, 468, 471, 468, 471, 109 of PPC, 36, 37 of ETO-2002 and R/W 5 (2)47 PCA against the MD/CEO of Silver Star Insurance Zahir Muhammad Sadiq and his other co-accused.

Zahir Muhammad Sadiq, Salah ud Din Ayubi, Head of Claim Department and Jamshaid, Assistant Manager Claim Department have not been arrested as yet.

An FIA official told The News that the accused were allegedly involved in managing the date of their customers and get their insurance registered with some other local and foreign insurance companies.

He added after a few months time of registering their customers with other insurance companies for reinsurance purposes, the accused allegedly sent their fake claims to those companies.

“Out of the total data we have scrutinised so far, officials of Silver Star Insurance Company have earned around Rs 22 million on the basis of 22 fake/bogus claims”, he said, adding the amount could increase once the scrutiny of the entire data was completed.

Another FIA official claimed that some influential people even serving government officials of different departments approached the FIA on the very matter and pleaded relief for the arrested accused. He claimed that senior FIA officials have told the sympathisers that everyone will be dealt as per law of the land and there was no room of any relief for any accused.

As per the FIR, a copy available with The News, it was found that operation of the Silver Star Insurance Company was being carried out by using software namely Cyber Solution in two data base servers. Server ‘A’ deals with cyber insurance, having genuine date, and Server ‘B’ which deals with cyber insurance, having fake and forged data.

As many as 22 out station sub offices of the said company located in Punjab and Sindh having access to the original data base server A while head office department account and underwriting were connected with the data base sever B.

The spot analysis of the server and computer system done by the FIA’s Technical team confirmed that bogus insurance policies were being generated by Abdul Ghaffar Shah for the purpose of cheating and fraud.

Likewise, under the instructions of Zahir Muhammad Shah, Ghaffar in connivance with Tanvir Ahmed Alvi, Muhammad Irfan and Muhammad Sajjad, was also involved in illegal alteration, modification, manipulation, addition and deletions in the computer system in order to show fake premium for inducement of public at large and re-insurers.

FIR further states that it was also transpired that insurance department manipulated and exploited the data available in server B in order to extract bogus claims from the foreign and Pakistani reinsurance companies. Initially, it was confirmed that Rs 21.64 million were extracted from re-insurers on the basis of bogus claims of 22 customers as illegal financial gains.

Talking to The News, Jameel Ahmed Khan said FIA captured five people from the spot whereas remaining accused including the MD/CEO would be arrested soon. Punjab FIA Director Dr Usman Anwar was not available for comments.

Source: thenews