LAHORE: The Punjab Police on Friday quashed a First Information Report (FIR) against Zing Digicomm CEO, Ghazanfar Khan, who had been accused by his business partner, Aurangzeb Khan, of defrauding him.
Officials at the Central Police Office (CPO) Lahore confirmed to Profit that the said report had been dismissed, with Investigation Incharge Sajjad Rasheed from Liaquatabad Police Station saying that the FIR had been dismissed because the accusing party failed to substantiate allegations against Ghazanfar.
“The FIR was incorrectly registered and had no merits,” Ghazanfar Khan told Profit. “The authorities rightly dismissed this complaint which was based on patent mala fide and ulterior motives when they learned of the actual facts of the case,” Rasheed said speaking to Profit.
In the FIR filed on August 27, Aurangzeb Khan had claimed that in mid-2017 Ghazanfar secured an Rs50 million investment from China and an additional Rs150 million investment – worth a total of $1.9 million at the time – to create a branchless banking service. With a banking and telecommunications background, Zing Digicomm CEO was granted sweat equity to handle the top-line growth.
Aurangzeb went on to allege that to date he has not seen a profit despite the business seemingly winning large contracts. According to the FIR filed by Aurangzeb Khan, Ghazanfar created his own similarly named businesses and routed closed deals to his own entity, duping customers and defrauding not only the principal partner but also investors.
Now, with the FIR quashed, Aurangzeb Khan, has said that he will challenge the dismissal of the report in a competent court of law. Zing Digicomm is headquartered at the prestigious Arfa Karim Tower in Lahore and provides Fintech solutions to the banking industry, developed in collaboration with its Chinese technology partner (Shanghai F-Road).
The FIR, citing the SECP database, read that Zing Digicomm was founded by Ghazanfar and Aurangzeb, with an equity split of 34% and 66% respectively.
Zing Technologies, originally incorporated under a different name in 2016 that was changed to Zing Technologies in January 2019, was founded by Ghazanfar Khan.
Both parties had earlier approached Model Town Police for the same case, which was dismissed by the Model Town Police for not having merit. The police said that the case fell under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) instead of the police.
However, the FIR, after some time, was registered at Liaquatabad Police Station.
Furthermore, Aurangzeb Khan had claimed that the deception has impacted his reputation in China and his subsequent credibility in bringing CPEC related projects to Pakistan. On the contrary, Ghazanfar had claimed that Aurangzeb was misrepresenting the public and the police by calling himself an investor in CPEC, and the verification in this regard was provided by the Government of Pakistan.
Profit had seen the documents to back Ghazanfar’s claim.
“Our Board of Directors is taking appropriate actions to ensure that this devious effort to defame our name is not unattended and fully answered with defamation lawsuit proceedings,” Ghazanfar said, urging the relevant quarters of the Government of Pakistan to take legal action against people like Aurangzeb Khan on the fraudulent misrepresentations, which are not only bringing bad name to the CPEC project but were also a threat to the brotherly relations of Pakistan and China.
