It’s a motley crew at the proposed Ground Zero mosque.
The inaugural board of directors for the controversial Islamic cultural center included a businessman linked to an accused spy for Pakistan and an insurance agent later indicted for fraud, The Post has learned.
The seven-member board of Park51 in 2011 included Sharif El-Gamal, the developer who is the leading force behind the plan to build a community center and prayer space on Park Place, and his brother, Sammy El-Gamal.
Board member Shafquat Chaudhary, a 64-year-old Long Island resident, also serves on the board of the Society for International Help. The group is the American arm of a Pakistani-based foundation started by the accused spy, Dr. Zaheer Ahmad, that promotes education and health care in Pakistan.
Chaudhary was also on the board of Ahmad’s Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan. Ahmad was indicted in 2011 with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without registering. He and accomplice Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai were accused of secretly spending more than $4 million from Pakistan’s spy agency to influence US foreign policy on Kashmir, the Muslim-dominated region between India and Pakistan.
Chaudhary was questioned by FBI agents before Ahmad was arrested, according to the Pro Publica news organization. He maintained he wasn’t involved in any money transfers from Pakistan. Ahmad died of a stroke in Pakistan just days after the Pro Publica story appeared in 2011. Chaudhary refused to answer questions when contacted by The Post.
Ahmad was also rumored to have gone with a nuclear scientist to visit Osama Bin Laden, according to Pro Publica.
Another Park51 board member Bedis Zormati, 38, was named in July in a nine-count indictment charging him and others with conspiracy, insurance fraud, theft by deception and attempted theft by deception.
Zormati who worked in the insurance industry, is accused of participating in a scheme from 2007 to 2011 to secure life insurance for the other defendants based on false claims, according to the charges filed by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.
If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison plus a fine of up to $150,000 on each of the nine counts.
“We’re actively and aggressively defending the charges,” said Maranda Fritz, Zormati’s lawyer.
Sharif El-Gamal said in a statement that Zormati resigned from the Park51 board in March 2012, and that Chaudhary was “one of this city’s most prominent business leaders.”
Other members of the Park51 board included Nour Mousa, an architect; Firoz Shaikh, an accountant; and Ameena Meer, who heads an advertising agency.
Andrew Douglas, the director of “The Amityville Horror” and Meer’s exhusband, sued her in 2010 claiming that she tricked him for years into thinking he was the father of her child.
