Many people heard Mahmood Moulvi’s name for the first time when he appeared on their TV screens on Tuesday, announcing that he was leaving the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

“I have never gone against the army and never will,” he said.

But who is Mr Moulvi?

Moulvi was serving as the senior vice president of the Paksitan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Sindh chapter when he decided to resign from the party. He joined the party in April 2018, a few months before Imran Khan’s PTI would win the general election and form government.

A Facebook post from Imran Khan’s official page from April 2018 shows Moulvi’s induction ceremony into the PTI. Imran Khan is seen putting a scarf in the PTI’s green and red colours around Moulvi’s neck.

Also seen in the photograph are Jahangir Tareen and Awn Chaudhry, who are no longer part of PTI, as well as Dr Ramesh Kumar who is still a member of the National Assembly as one of the party’s ‘dissident’ members.

‘Chairman MM Group of Companies Mahmood Moulvi joins PTI,’ reads the caption.

Moulvi contested the 2018 elections on the party’s ticket but lost to MQM-Pakistan’s Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui. Moulvi secured 50,352 votes, over 9,000 short of Siddiqui.

In 2021, he became a special assistant to the prime minister on maritime affairs and held that post till Imran Khan’s government ended.

Then, the NA 245 seat fell vacant when PTI’s Amir Liaqat passed away. Moulvi contested as the party’s candidate in the bye-election held on August 21, 2022 and won with 29, 475 votes.

Despite the party having resigned from the assembly, he was sworn in as a member of the house on 20 February 2023. He stayed a member for less than three months.

Although the Facebook post announcing his joining says ‘Chairman MM Group of Companies’, a look at the group’s website tells a different story.

The website names Mahwish Moulvi as the chairperson of the group, with three young directors named underneath, all with the same surname. Short biographies of two of these three directors mention that MM Group is a ‘family business’. All four people mentioned have MM as their initials, just like Mahmood Moulvi himself.

In a 2019 interview with Pakistangulfeconomist.com Moulvi introduced himself as the Chairman of the MM group as well as a former president of the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan.

Moulvi said in the interview that he had founded the company in 1986 and has since diversified. The company’s own website says that it started off as MM Marine Services, the same industry he advised the PM on. Now the group has branched off into rice, oil and brokerage companies, each under one of the three directors.

The group also owns a news website called MM News which was made with the aim of ‘providing the people of Pakistan access to unbiased information’. The website has an archive of Moulvi going about his work, including paying ‘surprise visits’ to Karachi port as SAPM.