The Wide Side Ft. Mir Muhammad Ali Khan

[Zibago]

@django @PakSword @BHarwana @RealNapster @Syed1. @Hell hound @Arsalan
One of the best interviews i have heard this year on such a variety of topics

 

[Clutch]

@django @PakSword @BHarwana @RealNapster @Syed1. @Hell hound @Arsalan
One of the best interviews i have heard this year on such a variety of topics

The story of MAK, the flamboyant Khan from Wall Street
ASAD FAROOQ | ZAIN SIDDIQUIUPDATED JUL 15, 2017 01:21PM
On Monday, May 8, without naming the accused, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) said it had unearthed a cybercrime racket run by an individual who had been caught "red-handed"cheating small investors by abusing his influence on social media.

A day later, the SECP chairman himself, Zafar Hijazi, hosted a press conference to elaborate on the matter and identify the culprit.

He named the accused as Mir Mohammad Ali Khan — also known to his hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook as 'Mir MAK' or 'MAK'.

Mir Mohammad Ali Khan.—Photo: Facebook


The announcement came as a rude shock to many.

The image MAK has carefully cultivated on social media over the past few years is impeccable: the well-groomed, well-dressed man his followers see on Facebook has been interviewed several times as an 'expert' by local TV channels; given lectures and conducted courses at top universities and corporations in the country; hobnobbed with senior military commanders; and received numerous 'awards', including one from the incumbent governor of Sindh himself.

To his many followers, he is a mentor, an 'enlightened' guide to the country's murky financial markets, a reputable author and an expert on the economy.

Instead, the SECP described MAK as a fraud, a "self-styled stock guru" who misled people for his own gains.

For some who have been following MAK's 'career', however, the SECP's announcement was something of an inevitability.

Dawn.com spoke to both the SECP and MAK regarding the Pakistani regulator's allegations against him and the accused's troublesome past. Here's what we found.

In the regulator's cross-hairs
The SECP had recently announced that it had decided to act against individuals who regularly express opinions on the stock market’s performance on social media.

“Behaving like stock market gurus and making suggestions about investments is illegal. This is a form of manipulation called inducement, which is a crime under the Securities Act, 2015,” Yasir Manzoor, head of the SECP’s Market Surveillance, Supervision and Enforcement Department, had said on April 25, while speaking at a workshop on insider trading and market manipulation.

“One of the latest forms of market manipulation is issuing a false statement, mainly through social media,” he said, adding that the SECP was trying to keep a check on such activities and that a list of 33 such links and pages had been forwarded to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

On May 9, 2017, exactly two weeks after that announcement, the SECP announced it was seeking criminal charges against one Mir Mohammad Ali Khan. The accused was defrauding small investors through a ‘pump and dump’ scheme run from Facebook that netted the accused close to Rs58 million over the course of six months, the regulator said.

“He would buy a large quantity of shares in a company and then tell his social media followers and friends that the financial prospects of the company had greatly improved. When his social media followers rushed to buy the stocks, he would sell his own holdings.

"He repeated this activity several times. By doing so, the accused earned a profit of Rs58 million within six months,” the SECP chairman, who hosted the press conference, told journalists.



Hijazi said the SECP had been keeping a close eye on MAK for the last two years as part of an investigation under Section 139 of the Securities Act, 2015 and had finally caught him "red handed" in the act.

MAK vehemently denied those allegations while speaking to Dawn.com.

"Lies are being circulated in the media against me," he told us.

He claimed that the SECP had not provided him with a single document of intimation regarding the charges being brought against him.

"I visited the SECP five times during the last year and a half. Some seven months ago, they cleared me and thanked me for my cooperation," he claimed.

Screenshot of the post shared by the SECP.

A screenshot of a follow-up post on GAIL, shared by the SECP.


While Hijazi did not detail the entire investigation into MAK's activities in his press conference, he did speak at length about two instances that he said show MAK's culpability in the charges being brought against him.

The first instance deals with an 'analysis' shared by MAK on the prospects of Ghani Automobile Limited (ticker:GAIL) on his Facebook page on July 13, 2015. In the post, he told his followers that the management of Ghani Automobile had spoken to him about the company being in the process of obtaining a license to manufacture tractors.

Before sharing this 'news' on his Facebook page, Hijazi alleged that MAK had bought 2,554,500 GAIL shares through an account opened in the name of his mother, Razia Farhat Khan.

Caught off guard by the rumour, which was rapidly picked up, Ghani Automobile notified the SECP and the Stock Exchange on July 24, 2015 clarifying that it was not seeking any license to produce tractors.

Another example of MAK 'inducing' his followers, according to the SECP.

MAK's follow-up post on CSIL, in which he apparently urges his followers to buy more CSIL stock. Shared by the SECP.


The incident did not go unnoticed.

The SECP later summoned both Ghani Automobile and MAK to explain their positions, highlighting the contradiction between Ghani Automobile's official statement to the stock market and MAK's claim that the company was acquiring a license to manufacture tractors.

Meanwhile, MAK's followers were buying into GAIL, and the stock price had consequently started rising. Then, according to the SECP, taking advantage of the movement in the stock price, MAK sold his entire holding, booking nearly Rs7.36 million in profit from the trade.

"He repeated the same practice in the shares of seven other scrips. Based on the aforesaid, it was evident that MAK has been involved in manipulating the market and making gains out of it through synchronised trades from a jointly-held account with his mother," Hijazi said at the briefing.

'Hang me by the neck if I'm proven guilty'
MAK has come out swinging against the allegation.

"I challenge the SECP to prove that my mother or I have Rs58 million in any of our bank accounts. They can hang me by the neck if they can," he told Dawn.com.

"Some channels were even airing the news of my arrest. How can I be talking to you, if I have been arrested," he said.

We asked SECP Deputy Director of Communications Sajid Gondal regarding the confusion surrounding MAK's current legal status. Gondal clarified that the SECP had never said they had "arrested" MAK, just that they had "caught him red-handed".

"The confusion might have arisen out of the media's misinterpretation of the word 'caught'," Gondal offered. "He is currently only accused of a crime," he said.

MAK also told Dawn.com that: "I have not written about stocks for the last two years, I have no brokerage house, I have no Facebook page on the stock market. I do not even charge a fee from my students."

However, in a post to his Facebook page on May 7, a day before the SECP announced it had 'caught' him, MAK had commented on the outcome of the French election, and what it entailed for the prospects of three Pakistani steel companies he identified by their stock market trading symbols.

ASL is the ticker for Aisha Steel Mills; ASTL for Amreli Steels; and CSAP is the symbol for Crescent Steel and Allied Products.


A day later, he spoke to his followers regarding the prospects of the same stocks, even providing an estimated price they could reach.

Screenshot of MAK's Facebook profile page.


"What I used to do was that I would purchase shares of a company and announce that I had made an investment. I also posted about both positive and negative aspects of my investment," he told Dawn.com.

"When I had recommended investment in GAIL shares, the value of its share was Rs10. It now stands at Rs19," he said. [GAIL closed on May 9 at Rs15.39; we spoke to MAK later the same day].

"What loss did I inflict on investors," he asked.

"I have a fan following in the millions and I have taught thousands of people on stocks, but not a single investor has filed any report against me," he added.

What are the laws that the SECP believes MAK is guilty of violating? Read them here.

No stranger to controversy
This is not the first time MAK has found himself in the middle of a legal storm.

In 2014, business journalist and entrepreneur Baqar Abbas Jafri had sent out a mass email to financial institutions and investors pointing to MAK's messy 'history'.

Jafri explained to Dawn.com that he had been approached by MAK in 2011 with assurances that the latter would help the former arrange a Dubai-based investor for Jafri's startup.

However, instead of getting him funding, Jafri said MAK stole the expanded vision for the company and claimed it as his own.

In the second paragraph of that email — sent to individuals associated in various capacities with financial markets — Jafri had said: "I would like to inform you all that I have been a victim to a fraud done by US Fugitive [sic] from Wall Street."

"After realising the extent of the fraud that is being hatched against me, and [the] history of the person involved, I relinquished everything and disassociated myself from the company," Jafri wrote.

"He has usurped all my concept and workings, and portrayed me as [an] employee [of the company only]. Now, after realising that his fraud is exposed, he is portraying me as a former employee (CEO) fired by the company," Jafri said.

MAK had proceeded to file a case against Jafri and his team for theft of intellectual property and even managed to have him arrested.

However, the court which was to hear the case shelved it in October 2016 citing lack of sufficient evidence provided by MAK's legal team and cleared the accused of the charges brought against them.

The court had said the case could still go to trial if MAK brought forth additional evidence to support his allegations. There seem to have been no significant developments so far.

The fugitive from Wall Street
There was a reason Jafri brought up MAK's history to demonstrate his own innocence.

"Mr Khan is a fugitive from justice in New York, where state prosecutors accused him last spring of stealing millions of dollars from several of his brokerage firm's customers — including some who also happened to be members of the Gambino organised crime family," American financial journalist Diana B. Henriques wrote inThe New York Times in January 2000.

She had stumbled across a "glowing profile of a young Karachi-born financial entrepreneur named Mohammad Ali Khan, who had returned to invest in his native land after 'a highly successful career' in New York."

"'As the youngest chairman and founder of an investment bank in America,'" Henriques quoted from the profile, "'his accomplishments are a little more than extraordinary.'"

"Well, in a way, perhaps they are," she added, wryly.

"The Gambino customers, one of whom is in federal prison, have expressed their annoyance by filing a lawsuit against the absent financier and one of his top brokers," Henriques wrote.

Her story said US prosecutors, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the New York state attorney's office had filed separate lawsuits against Khan in 1999 on charges of grand larceny and committing securities fraud.

We found a litigation release from the US SEC, dated May 17, 1999, in which the regulator wrote: "Khan, who controls KMS [Klein Maus & Shire Inc] and USFG [The United States Financial Group, Inc], and Kohli, Khan's brother-in-law, engaged in two fraudulent offerings of unregistered securities."

"First, between April 1996 and June 1997, KMS, Khan and Kohli fraudulently obtained at least $2.7 million from at least 55 purchasers of KMS securities by making false and misleading statements about KMS' business operations and by overstating its financial condition.

"Second, in offering for sale securities of USFG, KMS' parent company, from July 1997 through January 1998, USFG, Khan and Kohli made material misrepresentations concerning the financial condition of USFG. For example, Khan and Kohli, directly or indirectly, distributed financial statements for KMS and USFG that overstated each company's assets by more than 20-fold and 200-fold, respectively.

"During the course of the offerings of the KMS and USFG securities, Khan and Kohli diverted and dissipated for their personal benefit sums totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. By March 17, 1999, KMS had exhausted its capital and closed its doors.

"Khan and KMS also: (a) unlawfully offered and sold KMS securities without filing a registration statement and when no exemption was available; (b) unlawfully employed an unregistered salesman to sell the KMS securities and took steps to conceal that activity; and (c) failed to comply with the penny stock disclosure requirements in connection with the sale of the KMS securities," the SEC wrote.

The full text of the US Securities and Exchange Commission's litigation release can be read here.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had also filed a criminal complaint against Khan, Henriques reported, accusing him of committing securities fraud by using lies and exaggerations to entice at least 55 people to invest nearly $3 million in his brokerage firm.

'I was targeted for being Muslim'
When asked by Dawn.com about the outstanding criminal investigations against him in the United States, MAK said: "I was the first Muslim who opened a bank in the US, so they [US authorities] behaved with me the same way they treated Agha Hassan Abedi of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International."

Rejecting all allegations levelled against him in The New York Times and other publications, MAK asked: "Why did they not declare me an absconder and convict me in the last 17 years."

"Why were they unable to convict me even when I was unable to defend myself in US courts," he added.

This sense of victimisation reflects in MAK's public relations offensive following the SECP announcement.



He has also invoked religion and projected himself as a 'family guy' while attempting to tap into his followers' sympathies following the personally damaging announcement.



Commenting on why the SECP has decided to act against him in the following video, he says: "I write against what is wrong, maybe because of that; maybe because I speak the truth. Maybe because I have shut down a lot of people operating in capital markets by giving away free advice."



On the other hand, the SECP seems to believe they have the right man.

Confident of the case they have built, the SECP filed criminal charges against MAK in a court on May 9, 2017.

"MAK’s strategy is in violation of Sections 134 and 136 of the Securities Act, 2015 and accordingly penal provisions of Section 159 of the Securities Act, 2015 are proposed to be invoked against him," the regulator said in a press release posted to its website.

"He had been pinpointed. We have all the relevant records with us," Sajid Gondal told Dawn.com. "We have modern trading software that can detect and flag irregular trading patterns, which was used extensively in this case."

Gondal told Dawn.com that the SECP is aware of MAK's 'history' and has approached the Federal Investigation Agency to place him on the Exit Control List so that he does not flee the country.

The MAK case is the latest example of the SECP's robustness in dealing with securities-related crimes, Gondal said.

"We have been working with courts to apprise them of financial crimes and cases of securities fraud and have been getting a very positive response," he said.

If the court finds MAK guilty, he will face three years in jail on top of penalties, Gondal said.

"The penalties we will seek won't just include the return of the wrongful gains made by him, but also additional fines, which may run into the tens of millions of rupees," he said.

"We are confident we will secure a conviction."

 

[Zibago]

The story of MAK, the flamboyant Khan from Wall Street
ASAD FAROOQ | ZAIN SIDDIQUIUPDATED JUL 15, 2017 01:21PM
On Monday, May 8, without naming the accused, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) said it had unearthed a cybercrime racket run by an individual who had been caught "red-handed"cheating small investors by abusing his influence on social media.

A day later, the SECP chairman himself, Zafar Hijazi, hosted a press conference to elaborate on the matter and identify the culprit.

He named the accused as Mir Mohammad Ali Khan — also known to his hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook as 'Mir MAK' or 'MAK'.

Mir Mohammad Ali Khan.—Photo: Facebook


The announcement came as a rude shock to many.

The image MAK has carefully cultivated on social media over the past few years is impeccable: the well-groomed, well-dressed man his followers see on Facebook has been interviewed several times as an 'expert' by local TV channels; given lectures and conducted courses at top universities and corporations in the country; hobnobbed with senior military commanders; and received numerous 'awards', including one from the incumbent governor of Sindh himself.

To his many followers, he is a mentor, an 'enlightened' guide to the country's murky financial markets, a reputable author and an expert on the economy.

Instead, the SECP described MAK as a fraud, a "self-styled stock guru" who misled people for his own gains.

For some who have been following MAK's 'career', however, the SECP's announcement was something of an inevitability.

Dawn.com spoke to both the SECP and MAK regarding the Pakistani regulator's allegations against him and the accused's troublesome past. Here's what we found.

In the regulator's cross-hairs
The SECP had recently announced that it had decided to act against individuals who regularly express opinions on the stock market’s performance on social media.

“Behaving like stock market gurus and making suggestions about investments is illegal. This is a form of manipulation called inducement, which is a crime under the Securities Act, 2015,” Yasir Manzoor, head of the SECP’s Market Surveillance, Supervision and Enforcement Department, had said on April 25, while speaking at a workshop on insider trading and market manipulation.

“One of the latest forms of market manipulation is issuing a false statement, mainly through social media,” he said, adding that the SECP was trying to keep a check on such activities and that a list of 33 such links and pages had been forwarded to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

On May 9, 2017, exactly two weeks after that announcement, the SECP announced it was seeking criminal charges against one Mir Mohammad Ali Khan. The accused was defrauding small investors through a ‘pump and dump’ scheme run from Facebook that netted the accused close to Rs58 million over the course of six months, the regulator said.

“He would buy a large quantity of shares in a company and then tell his social media followers and friends that the financial prospects of the company had greatly improved. When his social media followers rushed to buy the stocks, he would sell his own holdings.

"He repeated this activity several times. By doing so, the accused earned a profit of Rs58 million within six months,” the SECP chairman, who hosted the press conference, told journalists.



Hijazi said the SECP had been keeping a close eye on MAK for the last two years as part of an investigation under Section 139 of the Securities Act, 2015 and had finally caught him "red handed" in the act.

MAK vehemently denied those allegations while speaking to Dawn.com.

"Lies are being circulated in the media against me," he told us.

He claimed that the SECP had not provided him with a single document of intimation regarding the charges being brought against him.

"I visited the SECP five times during the last year and a half. Some seven months ago, they cleared me and thanked me for my cooperation," he claimed.

Screenshot of the post shared by the SECP.

A screenshot of a follow-up post on GAIL, shared by the SECP.


While Hijazi did not detail the entire investigation into MAK's activities in his press conference, he did speak at length about two instances that he said show MAK's culpability in the charges being brought against him.

The first instance deals with an 'analysis' shared by MAK on the prospects of Ghani Automobile Limited (ticker:GAIL) on his Facebook page on July 13, 2015. In the post, he told his followers that the management of Ghani Automobile had spoken to him about the company being in the process of obtaining a license to manufacture tractors.

Before sharing this 'news' on his Facebook page, Hijazi alleged that MAK had bought 2,554,500 GAIL shares through an account opened in the name of his mother, Razia Farhat Khan.

Caught off guard by the rumour, which was rapidly picked up, Ghani Automobile notified the SECP and the Stock Exchange on July 24, 2015 clarifying that it was not seeking any license to produce tractors.

Another example of MAK 'inducing' his followers, according to the SECP.

MAK's follow-up post on CSIL, in which he apparently urges his followers to buy more CSIL stock. Shared by the SECP.


The incident did not go unnoticed.

The SECP later summoned both Ghani Automobile and MAK to explain their positions, highlighting the contradiction between Ghani Automobile's official statement to the stock market and MAK's claim that the company was acquiring a license to manufacture tractors.

Meanwhile, MAK's followers were buying into GAIL, and the stock price had consequently started rising. Then, according to the SECP, taking advantage of the movement in the stock price, MAK sold his entire holding, booking nearly Rs7.36 million in profit from the trade.

"He repeated the same practice in the shares of seven other scrips. Based on the aforesaid, it was evident that MAK has been involved in manipulating the market and making gains out of it through synchronised trades from a jointly-held account with his mother," Hijazi said at the briefing.

'Hang me by the neck if I'm proven guilty'
MAK has come out swinging against the allegation.

"I challenge the SECP to prove that my mother or I have Rs58 million in any of our bank accounts. They can hang me by the neck if they can," he told Dawn.com.

"Some channels were even airing the news of my arrest. How can I be talking to you, if I have been arrested," he said.

We asked SECP Deputy Director of Communications Sajid Gondal regarding the confusion surrounding MAK's current legal status. Gondal clarified that the SECP had never said they had "arrested" MAK, just that they had "caught him red-handed".

"The confusion might have arisen out of the media's misinterpretation of the word 'caught'," Gondal offered. "He is currently only accused of a crime," he said.

MAK also told Dawn.com that: "I have not written about stocks for the last two years, I have no brokerage house, I have no Facebook page on the stock market. I do not even charge a fee from my students."

However, in a post to his Facebook page on May 7, a day before the SECP announced it had 'caught' him, MAK had commented on the outcome of the French election, and what it entailed for the prospects of three Pakistani steel companies he identified by their stock market trading symbols.

ASL is the ticker for Aisha Steel Mills; ASTL for Amreli Steels; and CSAP is the symbol for Crescent Steel and Allied Products.


A day later, he spoke to his followers regarding the prospects of the same stocks, even providing an estimated price they could reach.

Screenshot of MAK's Facebook profile page.


"What I used to do was that I would purchase shares of a company and announce that I had made an investment. I also posted about both positive and negative aspects of my investment," he told Dawn.com.

"When I had recommended investment in GAIL shares, the value of its share was Rs10. It now stands at Rs19," he said. [GAIL closed on May 9 at Rs15.39; we spoke to MAK later the same day].

"What loss did I inflict on investors," he asked.

"I have a fan following in the millions and I have taught thousands of people on stocks, but not a single investor has filed any report against me," he added.

What are the laws that the SECP believes MAK is guilty of violating? Read them here.

No stranger to controversy
This is not the first time MAK has found himself in the middle of a legal storm.

In 2014, business journalist and entrepreneur Baqar Abbas Jafri had sent out a mass email to financial institutions and investors pointing to MAK's messy 'history'.

Jafri explained to Dawn.com that he had been approached by MAK in 2011 with assurances that the latter would help the former arrange a Dubai-based investor for Jafri's startup.

However, instead of getting him funding, Jafri said MAK stole the expanded vision for the company and claimed it as his own.

In the second paragraph of that email — sent to individuals associated in various capacities with financial markets — Jafri had said: "I would like to inform you all that I have been a victim to a fraud done by US Fugitive [sic] from Wall Street."

"After realising the extent of the fraud that is being hatched against me, and [the] history of the person involved, I relinquished everything and disassociated myself from the company," Jafri wrote.

"He has usurped all my concept and workings, and portrayed me as [an] employee [of the company only]. Now, after realising that his fraud is exposed, he is portraying me as a former employee (CEO) fired by the company," Jafri said.

MAK had proceeded to file a case against Jafri and his team for theft of intellectual property and even managed to have him arrested.

However, the court which was to hear the case shelved it in October 2016 citing lack of sufficient evidence provided by MAK's legal team and cleared the accused of the charges brought against them.

The court had said the case could still go to trial if MAK brought forth additional evidence to support his allegations. There seem to have been no significant developments so far.

The fugitive from Wall Street
There was a reason Jafri brought up MAK's history to demonstrate his own innocence.

"Mr Khan is a fugitive from justice in New York, where state prosecutors accused him last spring of stealing millions of dollars from several of his brokerage firm's customers — including some who also happened to be members of the Gambino organised crime family," American financial journalist Diana B. Henriques wrote inThe New York Times in January 2000.

She had stumbled across a "glowing profile of a young Karachi-born financial entrepreneur named Mohammad Ali Khan, who had returned to invest in his native land after 'a highly successful career' in New York."

"'As the youngest chairman and founder of an investment bank in America,'" Henriques quoted from the profile, "'his accomplishments are a little more than extraordinary.'"

"Well, in a way, perhaps they are," she added, wryly.

"The Gambino customers, one of whom is in federal prison, have expressed their annoyance by filing a lawsuit against the absent financier and one of his top brokers," Henriques wrote.

Her story said US prosecutors, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the New York state attorney's office had filed separate lawsuits against Khan in 1999 on charges of grand larceny and committing securities fraud.

We found a litigation release from the US SEC, dated May 17, 1999, in which the regulator wrote: "Khan, who controls KMS [Klein Maus & Shire Inc] and USFG [The United States Financial Group, Inc], and Kohli, Khan's brother-in-law, engaged in two fraudulent offerings of unregistered securities."

"First, between April 1996 and June 1997, KMS, Khan and Kohli fraudulently obtained at least $2.7 million from at least 55 purchasers of KMS securities by making false and misleading statements about KMS' business operations and by overstating its financial condition.

"Second, in offering for sale securities of USFG, KMS' parent company, from July 1997 through January 1998, USFG, Khan and Kohli made material misrepresentations concerning the financial condition of USFG. For example, Khan and Kohli, directly or indirectly, distributed financial statements for KMS and USFG that overstated each company's assets by more than 20-fold and 200-fold, respectively.

"During the course of the offerings of the KMS and USFG securities, Khan and Kohli diverted and dissipated for their personal benefit sums totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. By March 17, 1999, KMS had exhausted its capital and closed its doors.

"Khan and KMS also: (a) unlawfully offered and sold KMS securities without filing a registration statement and when no exemption was available; (b) unlawfully employed an unregistered salesman to sell the KMS securities and took steps to conceal that activity; and (c) failed to comply with the penny stock disclosure requirements in connection with the sale of the KMS securities," the SEC wrote.

The full text of the US Securities and Exchange Commission's litigation release can be read here.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had also filed a criminal complaint against Khan, Henriques reported, accusing him of committing securities fraud by using lies and exaggerations to entice at least 55 people to invest nearly $3 million in his brokerage firm.

'I was targeted for being Muslim'
When asked by Dawn.com about the outstanding criminal investigations against him in the United States, MAK said: "I was the first Muslim who opened a bank in the US, so they [US authorities] behaved with me the same way they treated Agha Hassan Abedi of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International."

Rejecting all allegations levelled against him in The New York Times and other publications, MAK asked: "Why did they not declare me an absconder and convict me in the last 17 years."

"Why were they unable to convict me even when I was unable to defend myself in US courts," he added.

This sense of victimisation reflects in MAK's public relations offensive following the SECP announcement.



He has also invoked religion and projected himself as a 'family guy' while attempting to tap into his followers' sympathies following the personally damaging announcement.



Commenting on why the SECP has decided to act against him in the following video, he says: "I write against what is wrong, maybe because of that; maybe because I speak the truth. Maybe because I have shut down a lot of people operating in capital markets by giving away free advice."



On the other hand, the SECP seems to believe they have the right man.

Confident of the case they have built, the SECP filed criminal charges against MAK in a court on May 9, 2017.

"MAK’s strategy is in violation of Sections 134 and 136 of the Securities Act, 2015 and accordingly penal provisions of Section 159 of the Securities Act, 2015 are proposed to be invoked against him," the regulator said in a press release posted to its website.

"He had been pinpointed. We have all the relevant records with us," Sajid Gondal told Dawn.com. "We have modern trading software that can detect and flag irregular trading patterns, which was used extensively in this case."

Gondal told Dawn.com that the SECP is aware of MAK's 'history' and has approached the Federal Investigation Agency to place him on the Exit Control List so that he does not flee the country.

The MAK case is the latest example of the SECP's robustness in dealing with securities-related crimes, Gondal said.

"We have been working with courts to apprise them of financial crimes and cases of securities fraud and have been getting a very positive response," he said.

If the court finds MAK guilty, he will face three years in jail on top of penalties, Gondal said.

"The penalties we will seek won't just include the return of the wrongful gains made by him, but also additional fines, which may run into the tens of millions of rupees," he said.

"We are confident we will secure a conviction."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1075050179974361091

 

[Asimzranger]

Use to admire him until i met him at company`s lunch ,he think he is some big shot, full of ego and that nice facade he show to people. anyhow he does give good insight and talks with facts.

 

[Clutch]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1075050179974361091

Its his own video defending himself. He has multiple investigations against him in different jurisdictions.

So you are telling me Wall Street is after him in some sort of grand conspiracy? And the Pakistani legal system has another conspiracy against him? And Dawn news has some grand conspiracy against him?

Everyone is conspiring against him because he is in essence a nobody but a fraudster?

Fugitive Financier Sought In Pakistan

​

Aseem Chhabra

Thirty-five year-old financial entrepreneur Mohammad Ali Khan had everything working for him. By thirty, he had a luxurious waterfront apartment in Jersey City, NJ, with a view of Manhattan, his own small brokerage shop on Wall Street, and his "charming personality and gracious manners" that won him major clients.

There were some clients of questionable reputation -- including members of the Gambino family. In recent court papers filed in the State Supreme Court of New York, the Gambinos (including Thomas F Gambino, who is serving a five-year prison term) have accused Khan and his associate Maurice Gross of swindling the family and using its money for "unauthorized trading".

Meanwhile, US prosecutors, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York state attorney's office have filed separate lawsuits against Khan, on charges of grand larceny and committing securities fraud, including lying and enticing at least 55 people to invest approximately $ 2.7 million in his brokerage firm.

For four years, starting with the 1995 opening of his Wall Street firm, Klein Maus and Shire, Khan had it really good. However when things started heating up last year, Khan, along with his wife and two sons, reportedly fled the country.

The New York Times recently quoted the Gulf Times from Qatar as saying that Khan had returned to his native Pakistan. In New York, Khan faces a trial and in the event of conviction, up to 15 years in prison.

"Mohammad was nice guy, a sweetheart of a man, who had nice manners; he never lost his temper and was an impeccable dresser," Gabriel Bernaschina, a former chief financial officer at Khan's brokerage firm told rediff.com

Bernaschina added that he left the firm after a 14 months tenure when he began to realize that "something was not on the up and up, something was wrong and about to change."

Khan's life in the US is a strange mix of facts and fiction. Reports indicate that he arrived in the US 19 years ago.

Tariq Al-Rifai, a Chicago-based Kuwaiti research consultant on Islamic finance, first met Khan three years ago through the Harvard Islamic Finance Information Program. Speaking to rediff.com, Al-Rifai said he was very impressed with the stories he heard from Khan about his early life in the US.

He said Khan had told him he had started in the US with nothing, that he drove a taxi as a student and then made his money by building up a chain of video stores, which he sold off to finance his move into investment.

"It sounded like the American dream," Al-Rifai added. "I know people like that so his story was believable. I thought he was a bright guy, very dedicated, very intelligent. But looking back at it I don't know what to believe. There was some truth to it and the rest of it wasn't true."

To SEC regulators, Khan said he worked for a couple of years as a video store clerk , while a student in the late 1980s at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. Others claims, some of which have been questioned by prosecutors and in recent news reports, include a stint as a trainee at the Magyar Savings Bank in North Brunswick, NJ, and a year selling insurance for the Prudential Insurance Company. In the 1990s he also reportedly worked at a couple of small brokerage companies, each of which ran into trouble and then folded.

Khan opened the office of Klein Maus and Shire on the 24th floor of 110 Wall Street. With the prestigious address the firm acquired reputable clients. The clients as well as employees were wined and dined, including a grand black tie Christmas party in Atlantic City, NJ, in December 1996.

"I remember Maurice Gross telling me that he was going to bring Willie Mays (the retired baseball player) as a client and make (Mohammad) Ali (Khan) rich," Bernaschina said, adding that Gross had earlier faced problems in his previous position at Gruntal & Company, a New York brokerage firm.

The Gambino family were Gross'ss clients at Gruntal. They followed him when he joined forces with Khan.

Bernaschina said Khan seemed to have grand plans, including that of opening a branch office in Dubai. Khan spent a substantial amount of his time trying to raise money for the Dubai office and was often traveling to the Middle-East, he added.

Al-Rifai said he met Khan twice -- once in New York and then in Bahrain.

"When I first went to meet him in New York, I never met him, since he canceled the appointment," Al-Rifai said. "He was well known for that, for not showing up, or changing his mind. He was invited to speak at Harvard University. He was on the conference brochure, but he never showed up. He was invited to speak at the annual Islamic Banking and Finance Forum at Bahrain, He attended, but never spoke."

Al-Rifai said Khan basically "lacked the depth of knowledge" about banking and finance.

"He was just there to make a quick buck," Al-Rifai said. "He did not understand the market. He was not really involved in it. He was looking for a niche market (such as Islamic finance) something he could use his name as leverage to attract funds."

Bernaschina said there were two things that made him leave Klein Maus and Shire. He once heard a bond trader make claims that the firm had assets worth $ 27 million. He later learnt that that was the company's official line.

"I knew that something was not right," Bernaschina said. "We didn't have that kind of money. We only had $ 400,000 in capital at that time."

He raised the issue with Khan, who shrugged it off as a "mistake" and that "everything will be straightened away".

Later the SEC came to investigate some of Khan's dealings, which Bernaschina said was a sign for him to leave the company.

According to the court documents filed, by early 1997 the Gambino family's accountant, Joseph Gluckman, began to notice improper activity in his clients' accounts at Khan's firm. Over the next several months Gluckman raised his concerns with Gross, even threatening to report the matter to SEC.

The SEC eventually caught up with Khan and Gross. By the fall of 1998 the regulatory body was investigating unethical ways in which Khan was raising money for a new venture, the US Financial Group. Meanwhile early last year the office of Eliot Spitzer, New York state's attorney-general office, intervened when it learnt that Khan was attempting to transfer approximately $ 2 million of his clients's invested money into a bank account in Dubai.

The money was eventually returned to the customers, and now state attorneys from Spitzer's office have managed to obtain an indictment from a Manhattan grand jury on grounds of second degree larceny.

There are federal and state arrest warrants against Khan, besides the Gambino family's pending lawsuit. Khan is said to have gone into hiding in Pakistan.

UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Litigation Release No. 16148 / May 17, 1999

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION v. KLEIN MAUS & SHIRE INC.,
THE UNITED STATES FINANCIAL GROUP INC., MOHAMMAD ALI KHAN AND
ASIM SAIN KOHLI, 99 Civ. 3424 (S.D.N.Y.) (RWS)

NEW YORK -- The Securities and Exchange Commission today
filed an action in federal court in Manhattan charging a
registered broker-dealer based in New York City, its parent
company and two individuals, including the sole common
stockholder of both companies, with securities fraud and other
violations. The Commission further alleges that at least 55
investors were defrauded of more than $2.7 million.

Named in the complaint are:

Klein Maus & Shire, Inc. ("KMS"), a broker-dealer registered
with the Commission and a member of the National Association of
Securities Dealers. KMS maintained its offices in New York, New
York.

The United States Financial Group, Inc. ("USFG"), a Delaware
corporation and the parent company of KMS and two other
subsidiaries: U.S. Military Resale Group, Inc. and KMS Asset
Management Group. Inc.

Mohammad Ali Khan ("Khan"), age 33, a resident of Franklin Park,
New Jersey and KMS' chief executive officer and sole owner of KMS
stock. Khan is also the chairman and president of USFG and the
sole owner of USFG common stock.

Asim Sain Kohli ("Kohli), age 33 and a resident of Monmouth
Junction, New Jersey. Kohli is KMS' operations manager and the
executive vice-president and chief operating officer of USFG.

According to the Commission's Complaint:

Khan, who controls KMS and USFG, and Kohli, Khan's brother-in-
law, engaged in two fraudulent offerings of unregistered
securities. First, between April 1996 and June 1997, KMS, Khan
and Kohli fraudulently obtained at least $2.7 million from at
least 55 purchasers of KMS securities by making false and
misleading statements about KMS' business operations and by
overstating its financial condition. Second, in offering for
sale securities of USFG, KMS' parent company, from July 1997
through January 1998, USFG, Khan and Kohli made material
misrepresentations concerning the financial condition of USFG.
For example, Khan and Kohli, directly or indirectly, distributed
financial statements for KMS and USFG that overstated each
company's assets by more than 20-fold and 200-fold,
respectively.

During the course of the offerings of the KMS and USFG
securities, Khan and Kohli diverted and dissipated for their
personal benefit sums totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.
By March 17, 1999, KMS had exhausted its capital and closed its
doors.

Khan and KMS also: (a) unlawfully offered and sold KMS
securities without filing a registration statement and when no
exemption was available; (b) unlawfully employed an unregistered
salesman to sell the KMS securities and took steps to conceal
that activity; and (c) failed to comply with the penny stock
disclosure requirements in connection with the sale of the KMS
securities.

The Commission alleges that by engaging in the foregoing conduct:
(a) KMS and Khan violated the antifraud provisions of the federal
securities laws [Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933
("Securities Act") and Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ("Exchange Act")], as well as, the
securities registration requirements [Section 5 of the Securities
Act], penny stock disclosure requirements [Section 15(g) and Rules
15g-2, 15g-3 through 15g-6 and 15g-9 of the Exchange Act] and
broker registration requirements [Section 15(b)(7) and Rule 15b7-1
of the Exchange Act] of the federal securities laws; (b) Kohli
violated the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws
[Section 17(a) of the Securities Act and Section 10(b) and Rule
10b-5 of the Exchange Act]; and (c) USFG violated certain antifraud
provisions of the federal securities laws [Sections 17(a)(1) and
17(a)(3) of the Securities Act].

The Commission seeks a final judgment: (1) permanently
enjoining the defendants from future violations of these
provisions of the federal securities laws; (2) requiring the
defendants to provide an accounting and to disgorge all ill-
gotten gains, plus prejudgment interest thereon; (3) imposing
civil penalties against Khan and Kohli; (4) ordering that
defendants repatriate all assets transferred abroad that were
obtained from the illegal activities; and (5) permanently
barring Khan and Kohli from serving as officers or directors of
a public company.

The litigation is pending.

 

[Umair Nawaz]

Use to admire him until i met him at company`s lunch ,he think he is some big shot, full of ego and that nice facade he show to people. anyhow he does give good insight and talks with facts.

o kaka g wo to main bhi hun! inn baaton ko choro, ye dekho k banda kahta kya ha...ye jo baatain ye kr raha ha wo sahe hain bilkul.

Its his own video defending himself. He has multiple investigations against him in different jurisdictions.

So you are telling me Wall Street is after him in some sort of grand conspiracy? And the Pakistani legal system has another conspiracy against him? And Dawn news has some grand conspiracy against him?

Everyone is conspiring against him because he is in essence a nobody but a fraudster?

Fugitive Financier Sought In Pakistan

​

Aseem Chhabra

Thirty-five year-old financial entrepreneur Mohammad Ali Khan had everything working for him. By thirty, he had a luxurious waterfront apartment in Jersey City, NJ, with a view of Manhattan, his own small brokerage shop on Wall Street, and his "charming personality and gracious manners" that won him major clients.

There were some clients of questionable reputation -- including members of the Gambino family. In recent court papers filed in the State Supreme Court of New York, the Gambinos (including Thomas F Gambino, who is serving a five-year prison term) have accused Khan and his associate Maurice Gross of swindling the family and using its money for "unauthorized trading".

Meanwhile, US prosecutors, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York state attorney's office have filed separate lawsuits against Khan, on charges of grand larceny and committing securities fraud, including lying and enticing at least 55 people to invest approximately $ 2.7 million in his brokerage firm.

For four years, starting with the 1995 opening of his Wall Street firm, Klein Maus and Shire, Khan had it really good. However when things started heating up last year, Khan, along with his wife and two sons, reportedly fled the country.

The New York Times recently quoted the Gulf Times from Qatar as saying that Khan had returned to his native Pakistan. In New York, Khan faces a trial and in the event of conviction, up to 15 years in prison.

"Mohammad was nice guy, a sweetheart of a man, who had nice manners; he never lost his temper and was an impeccable dresser," Gabriel Bernaschina, a former chief financial officer at Khan's brokerage firm told rediff.com

Bernaschina added that he left the firm after a 14 months tenure when he began to realize that "something was not on the up and up, something was wrong and about to change."

Khan's life in the US is a strange mix of facts and fiction. Reports indicate that he arrived in the US 19 years ago.

Tariq Al-Rifai, a Chicago-based Kuwaiti research consultant on Islamic finance, first met Khan three years ago through the Harvard Islamic Finance Information Program. Speaking to rediff.com, Al-Rifai said he was very impressed with the stories he heard from Khan about his early life in the US.

He said Khan had told him he had started in the US with nothing, that he drove a taxi as a student and then made his money by building up a chain of video stores, which he sold off to finance his move into investment.

"It sounded like the American dream," Al-Rifai added. "I know people like that so his story was believable. I thought he was a bright guy, very dedicated, very intelligent. But looking back at it I don't know what to believe. There was some truth to it and the rest of it wasn't true."

To SEC regulators, Khan said he worked for a couple of years as a video store clerk , while a student in the late 1980s at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. Others claims, some of which have been questioned by prosecutors and in recent news reports, include a stint as a trainee at the Magyar Savings Bank in North Brunswick, NJ, and a year selling insurance for the Prudential Insurance Company. In the 1990s he also reportedly worked at a couple of small brokerage companies, each of which ran into trouble and then folded.

Khan opened the office of Klein Maus and Shire on the 24th floor of 110 Wall Street. With the prestigious address the firm acquired reputable clients. The clients as well as employees were wined and dined, including a grand black tie Christmas party in Atlantic City, NJ, in December 1996.

"I remember Maurice Gross telling me that he was going to bring Willie Mays (the retired baseball player) as a client and make (Mohammad) Ali (Khan) rich," Bernaschina said, adding that Gross had earlier faced problems in his previous position at Gruntal & Company, a New York brokerage firm.

The Gambino family were Gross'ss clients at Gruntal. They followed him when he joined forces with Khan.

Bernaschina said Khan seemed to have grand plans, including that of opening a branch office in Dubai. Khan spent a substantial amount of his time trying to raise money for the Dubai office and was often traveling to the Middle-East, he added.

Al-Rifai said he met Khan twice -- once in New York and then in Bahrain.

"When I first went to meet him in New York, I never met him, since he canceled the appointment," Al-Rifai said. "He was well known for that, for not showing up, or changing his mind. He was invited to speak at Harvard University. He was on the conference brochure, but he never showed up. He was invited to speak at the annual Islamic Banking and Finance Forum at Bahrain, He attended, but never spoke."

Al-Rifai said Khan basically "lacked the depth of knowledge" about banking and finance.

"He was just there to make a quick buck," Al-Rifai said. "He did not understand the market. He was not really involved in it. He was looking for a niche market (such as Islamic finance) something he could use his name as leverage to attract funds."

Bernaschina said there were two things that made him leave Klein Maus and Shire. He once heard a bond trader make claims that the firm had assets worth $ 27 million. He later learnt that that was the company's official line.

"I knew that something was not right," Bernaschina said. "We didn't have that kind of money. We only had $ 400,000 in capital at that time."

He raised the issue with Khan, who shrugged it off as a "mistake" and that "everything will be straightened away".

Later the SEC came to investigate some of Khan's dealings, which Bernaschina said was a sign for him to leave the company.

According to the court documents filed, by early 1997 the Gambino family's accountant, Joseph Gluckman, began to notice improper activity in his clients' accounts at Khan's firm. Over the next several months Gluckman raised his concerns with Gross, even threatening to report the matter to SEC.

The SEC eventually caught up with Khan and Gross. By the fall of 1998 the regulatory body was investigating unethical ways in which Khan was raising money for a new venture, the US Financial Group. Meanwhile early last year the office of Eliot Spitzer, New York state's attorney-general office, intervened when it learnt that Khan was attempting to transfer approximately $ 2 million of his clients's invested money into a bank account in Dubai.

The money was eventually returned to the customers, and now state attorneys from Spitzer's office have managed to obtain an indictment from a Manhattan grand jury on grounds of second degree larceny.

There are federal and state arrest warrants against Khan, besides the Gambino family's pending lawsuit. Khan is said to have gone into hiding in Pakistan.

UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Litigation Release No. 16148 / May 17, 1999

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION v. KLEIN MAUS & SHIRE INC.,
THE UNITED STATES FINANCIAL GROUP INC., MOHAMMAD ALI KHAN AND
ASIM SAIN KOHLI, 99 Civ. 3424 (S.D.N.Y.) (RWS)

NEW YORK -- The Securities and Exchange Commission today
filed an action in federal court in Manhattan charging a
registered broker-dealer based in New York City, its parent
company and two individuals, including the sole common
stockholder of both companies, with securities fraud and other
violations. The Commission further alleges that at least 55
investors were defrauded of more than $2.7 million.

Named in the complaint are:

Klein Maus & Shire, Inc. ("KMS"), a broker-dealer registered
with the Commission and a member of the National Association of
Securities Dealers. KMS maintained its offices in New York, New
York.

The United States Financial Group, Inc. ("USFG"), a Delaware
corporation and the parent company of KMS and two other
subsidiaries: U.S. Military Resale Group, Inc. and KMS Asset
Management Group. Inc.

Mohammad Ali Khan ("Khan"), age 33, a resident of Franklin Park,
New Jersey and KMS' chief executive officer and sole owner of KMS
stock. Khan is also the chairman and president of USFG and the
sole owner of USFG common stock.

Asim Sain Kohli ("Kohli), age 33 and a resident of Monmouth
Junction, New Jersey. Kohli is KMS' operations manager and the
executive vice-president and chief operating officer of USFG.

According to the Commission's Complaint:

Khan, who controls KMS and USFG, and Kohli, Khan's brother-in-
law, engaged in two fraudulent offerings of unregistered
securities. First, between April 1996 and June 1997, KMS, Khan
and Kohli fraudulently obtained at least $2.7 million from at
least 55 purchasers of KMS securities by making false and
misleading statements about KMS' business operations and by
overstating its financial condition. Second, in offering for
sale securities of USFG, KMS' parent company, from July 1997
through January 1998, USFG, Khan and Kohli made material
misrepresentations concerning the financial condition of USFG.
For example, Khan and Kohli, directly or indirectly, distributed
financial statements for KMS and USFG that overstated each
company's assets by more than 20-fold and 200-fold,
respectively.

During the course of the offerings of the KMS and USFG
securities, Khan and Kohli diverted and dissipated for their
personal benefit sums totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.
By March 17, 1999, KMS had exhausted its capital and closed its
doors.

Khan and KMS also: (a) unlawfully offered and sold KMS
securities without filing a registration statement and when no
exemption was available; (b) unlawfully employed an unregistered
salesman to sell the KMS securities and took steps to conceal
that activity; and (c) failed to comply with the penny stock
disclosure requirements in connection with the sale of the KMS
securities.

The Commission alleges that by engaging in the foregoing conduct:
(a) KMS and Khan violated the antifraud provisions of the federal
securities laws [Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933
("Securities Act") and Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ("Exchange Act")], as well as, the
securities registration requirements [Section 5 of the Securities
Act], penny stock disclosure requirements [Section 15(g) and Rules
15g-2, 15g-3 through 15g-6 and 15g-9 of the Exchange Act] and
broker registration requirements [Section 15(b)(7) and Rule 15b7-1
of the Exchange Act] of the federal securities laws; (b) Kohli
violated the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws
[Section 17(a) of the Securities Act and Section 10(b) and Rule
10b-5 of the Exchange Act]; and (c) USFG violated certain antifraud
provisions of the federal securities laws [Sections 17(a)(1) and
17(a)(3) of the Securities Act].

The Commission seeks a final judgment: (1) permanently
enjoining the defendants from future violations of these
provisions of the federal securities laws; (2) requiring the
defendants to provide an accounting and to disgorge all ill-
gotten gains, plus prejudgment interest thereon; (3) imposing
civil penalties against Khan and Kohli; (4) ordering that
defendants repatriate all assets transferred abroad that were
obtained from the illegal activities; and (5) permanently
barring Khan and Kohli from serving as officers or directors of
a public company.

The litigation is pending.

o Kaka G, ye sarri excuses to ye log Dr Afia Siddiqui k baary main bhi dety hain!

Nobody buys that shit anymore!

 

[war&peace]

Use to admire him until i met him at company`s lunch ,he think he is some big shot, full of ego and that nice facade he show to people. anyhow he does give good insight and talks with facts.

It is because of the huge mental, academic and economical differences between you and him. Otherwise he is a pretty nice human being.

 

[Samlee]

Use to admire him until i met him at company`s lunch ,he think he is some big shot, full of ego and that nice facade he show to people. anyhow he does give good insight and talks with facts.

I Have Personally Met Him He Is Quite A Nice And Polished Personality.As For Egoism Come On Man, He Is Royalty He Is Grandson Of The Last Nizam Of Hyderabad

The story of MAK, the flamboyant Khan from Wall Street
ASAD FAROOQ | ZAIN SIDDIQUIUPDATED JUL 15, 2017 01:21PM
On Monday, May 8, without naming the accused, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) said it had unearthed a cybercrime racket run by an individual who had been caught "red-handed"cheating small investors by abusing his influence on social media.

A day later, the SECP chairman himself, Zafar Hijazi, hosted a press conference to elaborate on the matter and identify the culprit.

He named the accused as Mir Mohammad Ali Khan — also known to his hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook as 'Mir MAK' or 'MAK'.

Mir Mohammad Ali Khan.—Photo: Facebook


The announcement came as a rude shock to many.

The image MAK has carefully cultivated on social media over the past few years is impeccable: the well-groomed, well-dressed man his followers see on Facebook has been interviewed several times as an 'expert' by local TV channels; given lectures and conducted courses at top universities and corporations in the country; hobnobbed with senior military commanders; and received numerous 'awards', including one from the incumbent governor of Sindh himself.

To his many followers, he is a mentor, an 'enlightened' guide to the country's murky financial markets, a reputable author and an expert on the economy.

Instead, the SECP described MAK as a fraud, a "self-styled stock guru" who misled people for his own gains.

For some who have been following MAK's 'career', however, the SECP's announcement was something of an inevitability.

Dawn.com spoke to both the SECP and MAK regarding the Pakistani regulator's allegations against him and the accused's troublesome past. Here's what we found.

In the regulator's cross-hairs
The SECP had recently announced that it had decided to act against individuals who regularly express opinions on the stock market’s performance on social media.

“Behaving like stock market gurus and making suggestions about investments is illegal. This is a form of manipulation called inducement, which is a crime under the Securities Act, 2015,” Yasir Manzoor, head of the SECP’s Market Surveillance, Supervision and Enforcement Department, had said on April 25, while speaking at a workshop on insider trading and market manipulation.

“One of the latest forms of market manipulation is issuing a false statement, mainly through social media,” he said, adding that the SECP was trying to keep a check on such activities and that a list of 33 such links and pages had been forwarded to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

On May 9, 2017, exactly two weeks after that announcement, the SECP announced it was seeking criminal charges against one Mir Mohammad Ali Khan. The accused was defrauding small investors through a ‘pump and dump’ scheme run from Facebook that netted the accused close to Rs58 million over the course of six months, the regulator said.

“He would buy a large quantity of shares in a company and then tell his social media followers and friends that the financial prospects of the company had greatly improved. When his social media followers rushed to buy the stocks, he would sell his own holdings.

"He repeated this activity several times. By doing so, the accused earned a profit of Rs58 million within six months,” the SECP chairman, who hosted the press conference, told journalists.



Hijazi said the SECP had been keeping a close eye on MAK for the last two years as part of an investigation under Section 139 of the Securities Act, 2015 and had finally caught him "red handed" in the act.

MAK vehemently denied those allegations while speaking to Dawn.com.

"Lies are being circulated in the media against me," he told us.

He claimed that the SECP had not provided him with a single document of intimation regarding the charges being brought against him.

"I visited the SECP five times during the last year and a half. Some seven months ago, they cleared me and thanked me for my cooperation," he claimed.

Screenshot of the post shared by the SECP.

A screenshot of a follow-up post on GAIL, shared by the SECP.


While Hijazi did not detail the entire investigation into MAK's activities in his press conference, he did speak at length about two instances that he said show MAK's culpability in the charges being brought against him.

The first instance deals with an 'analysis' shared by MAK on the prospects of Ghani Automobile Limited (ticker:GAIL) on his Facebook page on July 13, 2015. In the post, he told his followers that the management of Ghani Automobile had spoken to him about the company being in the process of obtaining a license to manufacture tractors.

Before sharing this 'news' on his Facebook page, Hijazi alleged that MAK had bought 2,554,500 GAIL shares through an account opened in the name of his mother, Razia Farhat Khan.

Caught off guard by the rumour, which was rapidly picked up, Ghani Automobile notified the SECP and the Stock Exchange on July 24, 2015 clarifying that it was not seeking any license to produce tractors.

Another example of MAK 'inducing' his followers, according to the SECP.

MAK's follow-up post on CSIL, in which he apparently urges his followers to buy more CSIL stock. Shared by the SECP.


The incident did not go unnoticed.

The SECP later summoned both Ghani Automobile and MAK to explain their positions, highlighting the contradiction between Ghani Automobile's official statement to the stock market and MAK's claim that the company was acquiring a license to manufacture tractors.

Meanwhile, MAK's followers were buying into GAIL, and the stock price had consequently started rising. Then, according to the SECP, taking advantage of the movement in the stock price, MAK sold his entire holding, booking nearly Rs7.36 million in profit from the trade.

"He repeated the same practice in the shares of seven other scrips. Based on the aforesaid, it was evident that MAK has been involved in manipulating the market and making gains out of it through synchronised trades from a jointly-held account with his mother," Hijazi said at the briefing.

'Hang me by the neck if I'm proven guilty'
MAK has come out swinging against the allegation.

"I challenge the SECP to prove that my mother or I have Rs58 million in any of our bank accounts. They can hang me by the neck if they can," he told Dawn.com.

"Some channels were even airing the news of my arrest. How can I be talking to you, if I have been arrested," he said.

We asked SECP Deputy Director of Communications Sajid Gondal regarding the confusion surrounding MAK's current legal status. Gondal clarified that the SECP had never said they had "arrested" MAK, just that they had "caught him red-handed".

"The confusion might have arisen out of the media's misinterpretation of the word 'caught'," Gondal offered. "He is currently only accused of a crime," he said.

MAK also told Dawn.com that: "I have not written about stocks for the last two years, I have no brokerage house, I have no Facebook page on the stock market. I do not even charge a fee from my students."

However, in a post to his Facebook page on May 7, a day before the SECP announced it had 'caught' him, MAK had commented on the outcome of the French election, and what it entailed for the prospects of three Pakistani steel companies he identified by their stock market trading symbols.

ASL is the ticker for Aisha Steel Mills; ASTL for Amreli Steels; and CSAP is the symbol for Crescent Steel and Allied Products.


A day later, he spoke to his followers regarding the prospects of the same stocks, even providing an estimated price they could reach.

Screenshot of MAK's Facebook profile page.


"What I used to do was that I would purchase shares of a company and announce that I had made an investment. I also posted about both positive and negative aspects of my investment," he told Dawn.com.

"When I had recommended investment in GAIL shares, the value of its share was Rs10. It now stands at Rs19," he said. [GAIL closed on May 9 at Rs15.39; we spoke to MAK later the same day].

"What loss did I inflict on investors," he asked.

"I have a fan following in the millions and I have taught thousands of people on stocks, but not a single investor has filed any report against me," he added.

What are the laws that the SECP believes MAK is guilty of violating? Read them here.

No stranger to controversy
This is not the first time MAK has found himself in the middle of a legal storm.

In 2014, business journalist and entrepreneur Baqar Abbas Jafri had sent out a mass email to financial institutions and investors pointing to MAK's messy 'history'.

Jafri explained to Dawn.com that he had been approached by MAK in 2011 with assurances that the latter would help the former arrange a Dubai-based investor for Jafri's startup.

However, instead of getting him funding, Jafri said MAK stole the expanded vision for the company and claimed it as his own.

In the second paragraph of that email — sent to individuals associated in various capacities with financial markets — Jafri had said: "I would like to inform you all that I have been a victim to a fraud done by US Fugitive [sic] from Wall Street."

"After realising the extent of the fraud that is being hatched against me, and [the] history of the person involved, I relinquished everything and disassociated myself from the company," Jafri wrote.

"He has usurped all my concept and workings, and portrayed me as [an] employee [of the company only]. Now, after realising that his fraud is exposed, he is portraying me as a former employee (CEO) fired by the company," Jafri said.

MAK had proceeded to file a case against Jafri and his team for theft of intellectual property and even managed to have him arrested.

However, the court which was to hear the case shelved it in October 2016 citing lack of sufficient evidence provided by MAK's legal team and cleared the accused of the charges brought against them.

The court had said the case could still go to trial if MAK brought forth additional evidence to support his allegations. There seem to have been no significant developments so far.

The fugitive from Wall Street
There was a reason Jafri brought up MAK's history to demonstrate his own innocence.

"Mr Khan is a fugitive from justice in New York, where state prosecutors accused him last spring of stealing millions of dollars from several of his brokerage firm's customers — including some who also happened to be members of the Gambino organised crime family," American financial journalist Diana B. Henriques wrote inThe New York Times in January 2000.

She had stumbled across a "glowing profile of a young Karachi-born financial entrepreneur named Mohammad Ali Khan, who had returned to invest in his native land after 'a highly successful career' in New York."

"'As the youngest chairman and founder of an investment bank in America,'" Henriques quoted from the profile, "'his accomplishments are a little more than extraordinary.'"

"Well, in a way, perhaps they are," she added, wryly.

"The Gambino customers, one of whom is in federal prison, have expressed their annoyance by filing a lawsuit against the absent financier and one of his top brokers," Henriques wrote.

Her story said US prosecutors, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the New York state attorney's office had filed separate lawsuits against Khan in 1999 on charges of grand larceny and committing securities fraud.

We found a litigation release from the US SEC, dated May 17, 1999, in which the regulator wrote: "Khan, who controls KMS [Klein Maus & Shire Inc] and USFG [The United States Financial Group, Inc], and Kohli, Khan's brother-in-law, engaged in two fraudulent offerings of unregistered securities."

"First, between April 1996 and June 1997, KMS, Khan and Kohli fraudulently obtained at least $2.7 million from at least 55 purchasers of KMS securities by making false and misleading statements about KMS' business operations and by overstating its financial condition.

"Second, in offering for sale securities of USFG, KMS' parent company, from July 1997 through January 1998, USFG, Khan and Kohli made material misrepresentations concerning the financial condition of USFG. For example, Khan and Kohli, directly or indirectly, distributed financial statements for KMS and USFG that overstated each company's assets by more than 20-fold and 200-fold, respectively.

"During the course of the offerings of the KMS and USFG securities, Khan and Kohli diverted and dissipated for their personal benefit sums totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. By March 17, 1999, KMS had exhausted its capital and closed its doors.

"Khan and KMS also: (a) unlawfully offered and sold KMS securities without filing a registration statement and when no exemption was available; (b) unlawfully employed an unregistered salesman to sell the KMS securities and took steps to conceal that activity; and (c) failed to comply with the penny stock disclosure requirements in connection with the sale of the KMS securities," the SEC wrote.

The full text of the US Securities and Exchange Commission's litigation release can be read here.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had also filed a criminal complaint against Khan, Henriques reported, accusing him of committing securities fraud by using lies and exaggerations to entice at least 55 people to invest nearly $3 million in his brokerage firm.

'I was targeted for being Muslim'
When asked by Dawn.com about the outstanding criminal investigations against him in the United States, MAK said: "I was the first Muslim who opened a bank in the US, so they [US authorities] behaved with me the same way they treated Agha Hassan Abedi of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International."

Rejecting all allegations levelled against him in The New York Times and other publications, MAK asked: "Why did they not declare me an absconder and convict me in the last 17 years."

"Why were they unable to convict me even when I was unable to defend myself in US courts," he added.

This sense of victimisation reflects in MAK's public relations offensive following the SECP announcement.



He has also invoked religion and projected himself as a 'family guy' while attempting to tap into his followers' sympathies following the personally damaging announcement.



Commenting on why the SECP has decided to act against him in the following video, he says: "I write against what is wrong, maybe because of that; maybe because I speak the truth. Maybe because I have shut down a lot of people operating in capital markets by giving away free advice."



On the other hand, the SECP seems to believe they have the right man.

Confident of the case they have built, the SECP filed criminal charges against MAK in a court on May 9, 2017.

"MAK’s strategy is in violation of Sections 134 and 136 of the Securities Act, 2015 and accordingly penal provisions of Section 159 of the Securities Act, 2015 are proposed to be invoked against him," the regulator said in a press release posted to its website.

"He had been pinpointed. We have all the relevant records with us," Sajid Gondal told Dawn.com. "We have modern trading software that can detect and flag irregular trading patterns, which was used extensively in this case."

Gondal told Dawn.com that the SECP is aware of MAK's 'history' and has approached the Federal Investigation Agency to place him on the Exit Control List so that he does not flee the country.

The MAK case is the latest example of the SECP's robustness in dealing with securities-related crimes, Gondal said.

"We have been working with courts to apprise them of financial crimes and cases of securities fraud and have been getting a very positive response," he said.

If the court finds MAK guilty, he will face three years in jail on top of penalties, Gondal said.

"The penalties we will seek won't just include the return of the wrongful gains made by him, but also additional fines, which may run into the tens of millions of rupees," he said.

"We are confident we will secure a conviction."

Just Look Who Is Accusing MAK Ishaq Dar's Tamperer in Chief Zafar Hijazi

 

[Zibago]

I Have Personally Met Him He Is Quite A Nice And Polished Personality.As For Egoism Come On Man, He Is Royalty He Is Grandson Of The Last Nizam Of Hyderabad




Just Look Who Is Accusing MAK Ishaq Dar's Tamperer in Chief Zafar Hijazi

Oh fish i forgot where i heard that name Hijazi

 

[Asimzranger]

It is because of the huge mental, academic and economical differences between you and him. Otherwise he is a pretty nice human being.

The difference in academic and economical are there ,mentally sure he had experience and I did said in my previous post he gives good insight and to some aspects decent human to but I am not the *** kissing like most folks are

 

[war&peace]

The difference in academic and economical are there ,mentally sure he had experience and I did said in my previous post he gives good insight and to some aspects decent human to but I am not the *** kissing like most folks are

bhai most of successful people have some sort of attitude or confidence that can be misinterpreted as arrogance by some. Steve Jobs, one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our times, is considered to be arrogant by many while I studied his life and I feel they are totally mistaken... he was just committed and simply knew more than others about innovation, business and future.

A guy who remembers his past and humble beginning and openly discloses that without any shame like doing janitorial jobs or working as a waiter ..etc .. I don't think he is arrogant so I think you are mistaken.

 

[Zibago]

 

[Ocelot]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1083265604910501888

@Sheena1980 / Nalini

Respected sir, I remember in the past you have given some predictions on Pak's exchange rate which were totally accurate. You gave more ominous predictions that would have been true hadn't the new govt. started firefighting and saved the country from an imminent danger of bankruptcy. The person in the tweet is a famous Pakistani investment banker (this thread is on him), do you agree with his prediction on foreign reserves, exports and FDI? What are your views on this.

 

[Sheena1980]

@Ocelot I can definitely give my view on each & every question asked & also give solution. But neither people will like the bitter reality of my prediction nor the solutions which are acid - can burn just hearing forget tasting. Are you for it

Honestly Imran Khan is doing a reasonably good job, but he's not a diva who can charm & make the world fall for Pakistan.

If I give my views people will be at my throat & thousands of request will go at once to mods to ban me. But yes Pakistan can be saved if they apply what I say. What the man (Muhammad Ali Khan) said is nothing great. He didn't give any genuine, definite, assured or magical advice or solution to turn around the economy. His interview would please a layman who doesn't know economics. For me it was just a normal interview & he's just a basic ordinary finance guy not a Manmohan Singh & nowhere close.

I can show topic by topic using every indicator, how your economy is doing & what should be done. But your economy is reached a stage it's very very difficult to make a swift comeback. When you are on Ventilator for more than 15-20 days the one common risk is slowly other organs get infected one after other & there is a Multiple organ failure & you perish. Can you carry yourself with a single organ failure for 30-45 days without other organ getting infected. How highly capable are your doctors - Do you have that kind of doctors or have money, mind & guts to hire that kind of world class doctors or there should be a medical miracle.

In short this is where you stand. I can go in detail but what's the use if everybody is gonna take me negatively & attack me. Sorry to say, I have nothing against Muslims but there is problems with Islam. My solutions will revolve around religion, which will be a hard pill to swallow, but it will work if you take it. I can give point by point solution. I can come to Pakistan or send someone to bridge India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Kashmir, US. Your country can be as prosperous & developed as Germany & as happy as Canada, Switzerland. But it will take time & need a total change of policies & approach. It's a long way. First is whether you act fast to avoid the ailment to spread. You are in ICU on ventilator. You need to act now. Every minute, second is precious, later even if you come with the miracle drug which can save it will be of no use. It's needed now

What's your Forex reserves now & what is he talking. Patriotism is good. Exaggeration is not ok, then what can you say for over exaggeration. In nut shell his projection is too far from reality. Leave alone this year if you achieve what he says in 5-6 years it's great

 

[Ocelot]

@Ocelot I can definitely give my view on each & every question asked & also give solution. But neither people will like the bitter reality of my prediction nor the solutions which are acid - can burn just hearing forget tasting. Are you for it

Honestly Imran Khan is doing a reasonably good job, but he's not a diva who can charm & make the world fall for Pakistan.

If I give my views people will be at my throat & thousands of request will go at once to mods to ban me. But yes Pakistan can be saved if they apply what I say. What the man (Muhammad Ali Khan) said is nothing great. He didn't give any genuine, definite, assured or magical advice or solution to turn around the economy. His interview would please a layman who doesn't know economics. For me it was just a normal interview & he's just a basic ordinary finance guy not a Manmohan Singh & nowhere close.

I can show topic by topic using every indicator, how your economy is doing & what should be done. But your economy is reached a stage it's very very difficult to make a swift comeback. When you are on Ventilator for more than 15-20 days the one common risk is slowly other organs get infected one after other & there is a Multiple organ failure & you perish. Can you carry yourself with a single organ failure for 30-45 days without other organ getting infected. How highly capable are your doctors - Do you have that kind of doctors or have money, mind & guts to hire that kind of world class doctors or there should be a medical miracle.

In short this is where you stand. I can go in detail but what's the use if everybody is gonna take me negatively & attack me. Sorry to say, I have nothing against Muslims but there is problems with Islam. My solutions will revolve around religion, which will be a hard pill to swallow, but it will work if you take it. I can give point by point solution. I can come to Pakistan or send someone to bridge India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Kashmir, US. Your country can be as prosperous & developed as Germany & as happy as Canada, Switzerland. But it will take time & need a total change of policies & approach. It's a long way. First is whether you act fast to avoid the ailment to spread. You are in ICU on ventilator. You need to act now. Every minute, second is precious, later even if you come with the miracle drug which can save it will be of no use. It's needed now

What's your Forex reserves now & what is he talking. Patriotism is good. Exaggeration is not ok, then what can you say for over exaggeration. In nut shell his projection is too far from reality. Leave alone this year if you achieve what he says in 5-6 years it's great

Well people in our part of the world are emotional, dogmatic and easily provoked to anger. The difference is that you had farsighted rulers and thus are in better shape, whereas people from our side are more frustrated and the society has regressed. I like it when you post you're usually thinking 3-4 years ahead, whereas people here are oblivious to the concept of long-term thinking. They don't know where they would be in next 10 or 20 years, and just live for shortsighted adrenaline and gains, which is a major reason why we are in a mess. I wasn't particularly asking about the interview, but his speculation that Pak's reserves will reach $30 billion by the end of 2019. If possible, would you like to share your e-mail, would love to benefit from your profound intellect & knowledge.