FIA: The Official Arm-twisting Wing

By Mirza Khurram Shahzad –

Established in January 1975 through a special act passed the year before, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is a prestigious investigative civilian authority. The main objective of this agency was the investigation of Scheduled offences, committed in connection with the affairs of the Federal Government.

Officially, the vision of FIA is to be a law enforcement agency which not only enjoys the respect of society for its integrity, professional competence, and impartiality but also serves as a role model for provincial police forces.

Its mission statement is to promote a culture of merit, provide continuous professional training, ensure effective internal accountability, encourage use of technology and have a meaningful feedback mechanism.

The duties officially assigned to the FIA deal with immigration control, human trafficking, financial embezzlements, money laundering, identity fraud, national security, fiscal and business related offences, forgery and fraud and finally, cyber crime.

But decades after its inception, the FIA today is better known for its involvement in political maneuvering and clamping down on political dissidents. During almost all the regimes in last 30 years, the department has virtually acted as an ‘arm-twisting wing’ of the sitting governments to grill their political opponents.

Former premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto established the Federal Security Force (FSF) and tried to use it as his personal ‘strong arm’ to deal with both detractors in general and defectors from his own party. Though the FIA also was established by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, this institution kept to its statutory track in the beginning. It started showing its teeth only after military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq’s tyrannical rule came to an abrupt end as a result of the C-130 plane crash near Bahawalpur.

The FIA formally started indulging in political machinations after Benazir Bhutto came to power in 1988. The most vivid example of the FIA being used for ‘witch hunting’ being that of the (late) former Prime Minister herself, who spent most of her life out of office and in exile, and her spouse Asif Ali Zardari, who spent over 10 years behind bars.

The FIA stirred up cases of corruption and fraud to politically victimize the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and its top leadership. A few years later, the PML-N leadership also faced similar cases when the PPP came into power as the FIA was entrusted with digging up all the dirt they can on the Sharifs, particularly financial scams, to bring the brothers and other members of the PML-N to their knees.

Political victimization being the operative term here, because nothing concrete really developed from the FIA’s ‘investigations’; if nothing conclusive came out of cases like the Swiss Bank accounts, Surrey Palace, SSG Cotacna or Hudaybia Paper Mills, the Raiwind assets and Ittefaq Foundary, it is because there was never intended to be a result or a conclusion.

Or revising that, there was one result. Eventually, this series of political interventions by the FIA led to corruption within its own ranks. While those sitting at the top were dilly dallying with politically motivated cases, those in the middle and lower ranks were left free to do whatever they wanted, to whomever they wanted. Palm greasing became the order of the day amongst the employee ranks.

During Musharraf’s regime, the FIA mainly helped NAB to frame cases against politicians, industrialists and government officials. Then, in the Zardari-led PPP government, it’s major contribution was a scam against the Chaudhry brothers involving Bank of Punjab. A few years on, the FIA was again at centre stage implicating General Pervez Musharraf in Benazir Bhutto’s murder case. And after PML-N came in power in centre and decided to frame treason charges against General Pervez Musharraf, it was the same FIA which made a case of high treason against him for imposing emergency in 2007. The point not being that any and all of these individual cases were wrong, but that the FIA has primarily become a private investigator for the incumbent government.

Involvement in crimes

Besides being the armed wing of sitting governments, the FIA has also been involved in several unsavoury crimes which it should technically be fighting. These include smuggling goods and human beings from the country’s ports and taking bribes for framing charges against people. The on the streets staff of the agency has also reputedly become a part of local prostitution gangs.

Then there are the illegal appointments in the organization itself. According to a former Director General of the FIA, “Almost all the governments recruited incompetent staff for their political gains that burdened the organization. These political employees were not only incompetent but also got engaged in illegal activities such as patronizing criminals, which detracted FIA from its original goal.”

“Now, there are mafias inside the organization who attend to the interests of their patrons. And their patrons in the parliament and bureaucracy protect them whenever there is an official enquiry into their actions,” he said. Lawyer Zulfiqar Ali Bhutta, who handles several cases involving the FIA, says the criminals are protected by the officials of the department and other influential people.

“I have seen in many cases that when the culprits are close to getting a punishment, the officials of FIA and influential politicians/government officials come to their rescue,” he said. “They have a major part in the smuggling of young girls from Pakistan abroad for prostitution, but nobody takes any action,” Bhutta said.

FIA officials, however, deny any wrongdoings. “There are good and bad people in every organization, but you can’t declare an institution corrupt or incompetent as a whole,” said a senior official of the department. “We have our own accountability system and take action against our own employees if a complaint is proved true,” he said. The official further explained that the FIA has been transformed into a modern investigation agency and has performed well in curbing crimes involving information technology.

“Our cyber crimes wing is one of the best units in South Asia which has traced many high profile cases and foiled major attempts to breach the law,” he said. “We have introduced new techniques to solve complicated cases and our performance is getting better with the passage of time,” he concluded.

But the neutral observers say that the FIA’s performance is getting worse on account of being so tightly governed by the ministry of interior. “FIA is not an independent institution as an investigative body should be. The shadow of the interior ministry is affecting its performance,” says Mobarik A. Virk, a senior journalist.

Virk, who works with national and international media, says that every interior minister uses it as his personal army. “Because the FIA is not a completely autonomous body, it has to comply with the orders of the interior minister, prime minister and the bureaucracy. Until and unless it wins its autonomous status, we can’t expect it to deliver results without any nepotism and corruption,” he said.

The writer is a journalist based in Islamabad.