The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) on Thursday said that some politicians have started filing false claims for financial profit. The insurance industry has a defence mechanism against false or exaggerated claims, but it becomes difficult when policy holder is an influential politician, it said. Such practices and highly illegal but very common in the insurance industry due to weak control, said Abdullah Tariq, SVP PEW.
Talking to representatives of insurance industry, he said that some greedy politicians have targeted corporate sector after robbing nation of all their belongings. He said that one such example is a State Minister for Privatisation, who has earned around Rs 200 million through fake claims in the last five years.
The politician is now pressing some insurance companies to approve claims against damages that never occurred, he added.
Tariq said that favourite modus operandi of the minister is to deliberately set part of the stock in factory on fire to make false claims. The local administration, fire department and his party would always support his moves while the officials of the insurance companies would get threats to approve claim immediately, he said.