16 year old Norwegian case against Umar Farooq Zahoor dropped citing lack of evidence

The decision that ended Umar Farooq Zahoor’s 16-year ordeal was, in substance, taken once before in 2012, by the Oslo Police, and then quietly set aside. The prosecution now set aside the case due a lack of evidence.

That is the detail that stands out in the legal documents now closing the corruption case against the Norwegian-Pakistani businessman. Norway’s top prosecuting authority has dismissed the case outright, concluding there is not enough evidence to prosecute him or to justify keeping the file open at all.

Start at the beginning. Norwegian law-enforcement authorities opened their investigation in 2010, into a multi-million-kroner fraud against the bank Nordea. Zahoor was drawn into it and was eventually accused of being one of the alleged principal figures behind the scheme. He cooperated with police through his lawyers and denied any role, a position he has never moved from.

Two years in, the police reached a conclusion. In 2012 Oslo Police closed the case on evidential grounds and recommended to the public prosecutor that the case against Zahoor be dismissed.

Nothing happened.

According to the court documents, prosecutor Carl Graff Hartmann kept the file open for years afterwards and continued making statements to the media. The charge stayed live. Zahoor remained wanted, and Norway pursued his extradition. The UAE refused to comply, citing a lack of evidence.

Zahoor’s own answer to the allegation was always partly a matter of geography. The banking case dated to 2010. He had not been to Norway since 2005.

The file moved again only after Zahoor turned the machinery around. In recent months he launched legal proceedings against Hartmann himself, alleging that the prosecutor had conspired against him over the years in collusion with the right-wing Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang, repeatedly targeting him on false grounds. Zahoor alleged in particular that Hartmann had fed defamatory and false narratives to his contacts in the right-wing media, to settle what Zahoor called a personal enmity.

Faced with the defamation action, Norwegian authorities referred the case to the chief prosecutor for review. The review did not take long. Within a week of receiving the file, the chief prosecutor decided this week to dismiss the case completely.

The language of the dismissal is dry. The case is dropped “due to the state of the evidence”, which is “insufficient”. But the order attached to it is the part with teeth: Norwegian law enforcement agencies, including the police, are directed to “take the necessary steps regarding any still-active wanted-person alerts/notices”, withdrawing outstanding notices and warrants locally and internationally.

That police letter, meanwhile, had been travelling. In Pakistan, it was placed before a court alongside an investigation report by the Federal Investigation Agency. In May 2023, Lahore judicial magistrate Ghulam Murtaza Virk relied on both to clear Zahoor in two fraud and money-laundering cases registered against him in 2020, under the PTI government, after complaints by his former wife, Sophia Mirza.

Following a bitter divorce, Mirza had alleged that Zahoor was involved in bank fraud in Norway in 2010 and in a separate alleged fraud in Bern, Switzerland, in 2004. The FIA informed the court that its investigation found no evidence establishing Zahoor’s involvement in fraud, money laundering or corruption. The Oslo Police letter confirmed that Norwegian investigators lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute him successfully.

There is one more document worth noting, and it is recent. On March 16, 2026, Norwegian Police issued a certificate stating that Zahoor had no criminal record in Norway, and that there were no registered criminal sanctions or convictions against him within Norwegian jurisdiction, in accordance with the Police Databases Act. Zahoor says VG nonetheless published an article against him around the time of the high-profile US visit to Pakistan, allegedly with the prosecutor’s assistance.

His broader claim against the paper is that it conducted a racist, Islamophobic, malicious and one-sided campaign against him for more than 16 years, publishing defamatory material and repeating false corruption claims, even after Interpol ended cases against him because of their political nature and police and courts ended cases on the same basis. He alleges VG worked in alliance with sections of the Indian media.

Zahoor’s statement, issued through his Norwegian lawyer, reads like a man counting a bill. “For nearly 16 years, this case has followed my name around the world. It has followed me to banks, authorities, business partners and international meetings. But the worst thing is not what it has cost me professionally. The worst is the moments with my family that I can never get back.”

He said the prosecution had now established, after nearly 16 years, that there was insufficient evidence of corruption and wrongdoing against him, and that the dismissal rested on the government’s own internal prosecution inquiry, which found the case lacked merit and evidence and that continuing it was not in the public interest.

“I am finally vindicated and my innocence is established,” he said, “but I have paid a huge price due to the victimisation I faced at the global level.” He thanked “the prosecutor who saw through the facts”.