US court orders to extradite Hamesh Khan

Pakistan

US court orders to extradite Hamesh Khan

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16 March,2010 07:17 am

US court has ordered to hand over former president of Bank of Punjab Hamesh Khan to Pakistani authorities. His surrender orders will be issued in six weeks time by the US State Department.The former president of Pakistan's Bank of Punjab, who holds dual citizenship in that country and the United States and was a US government employee, faces extradition to Pakistan under an 80-year-old treaty to face corruption charges in a $10 million fraud case with international political overtones. But Hamesh Khan has denied any wrongdoing and said he will fight efforts to return to him to his native country, which he left in 2008. The US State Department must decide whether to send him back to Pakistan or resist the pending extradition request. Pakistan's National Accountability Bureau (NAB), an anti-corruption organization with broad enforcement powers, and the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, have charged Hamesh Khan with forgery and fraud against the Bank of Punjab and of leaving the country while restricted. Sheik Muhammad Afzal, director of Haris Steel Industries in Lahore, Pakistan, has made sworn statements to the NAB that he and Mr. Khan were co-conspirators in a scheme, in which Afzal borrowed $10 million from the bank by opening more than two dozen loan accounts with false identities and worthless collateral.