Sources toldBusiness Recorder here on Thursday that the Directorate General Customs has surpassed all previous records of achievement in a single month. The final tally of value of the goods seized during the month stands at Rs 1,132.68 million and the evasion of duty/taxes detected during the month is Rs 2,749.94 million. The total works out to Rs 3882.62 million. The agency has unearthed evasion of duties and taxes of Rs 2.74 billion in 20 big cases during the period of February 2017.
The comparison of the performance of the Directorate General during February 2017 with the corresponding month of the previous year revealed that the value of goods seized during February 2017 was Rs 1,132.68 million against Rs 748.99 million in February 2016, reflecting an increase of 51 per cent. Evasion of duties and taxes detected stood at Rs 2,749.94 million during February 2017 as compared to Rs 63.67 million in February, 2016, reflecting an increase of 4,319 per cent.
Major contributors to the aforesaid outstanding performance were Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar Directorates. However, the Lahore Directorate (due to the fearless operations conducted by Deputy Director Ali Zeb Khan and personally supervised by Director Zeba Hai Azhar) stood out in terms of volume and importance of seizures and detections. The case of M/s Marush International, the first of its kind detected by any field formation of FBR in terms of unearthing of evidence on money laundering, was affected by Director Lahore and her team which deserves to be duly appreciated as the same has brought lot of good name to FBR to as well as the Directorate General. She along with her team also detected evasion of an amount of Rs 2,531.49 million against one importer. It is strongly felt that efforts of outgoing director Lahore (now posted as Chief Collector of Customs - Central, Lahore) should be formally acknowledged in this behalf by the FBR.
During the period under review, Customs Intelligence has also recovered foreign origin hashish of 901-kg in different parts of the country amounting to Rs 90.14 million.
A major case is relating to the seizure of fabrics, cosmetics and mobile accessories at Port Qasim, Karachi. The Regional Office, Customs Enforcement, Karachi seized a huge quantity of dutiable goods including, fabrics, cosmetics, mobile accessories, etc stuffed in four containers of 40 feet, valuing Rs 20.17 million. The customs staff of Port Muhammad Bin Qasim had cleared the goods as remeltable iron scrap on payment of nominal duty/taxes amounting to Rs 0.83 million. The containers were blocked by the Directorate General at the gate-out stage. The amount of duty/taxes actually chargeable on the recovered goods was Rs 10.18 million. An FIR has been lodged with the court of Special Judge (Customs, Taxation & Anti-smuggling), Karachi, nominating, Khurram Iqbal (importer), Malik Jamshed Jawaid (clearing agent) and three customs officers of MCC and Port Muhammad Bin Qasim. The Directorate General has also approached the customs administration in UAE through commercial counsellor posted in UAE, for obtaining details of previously cleared 162 suspected containers.
Some other cases revealed that acting upon a specific information, the staff of Customs Intelligence Peshawar scanned an Emirates flight arrived from Dubai around 9:00am. On thorough search 4 cartoons and three handbags were found without tags on conveyor belt.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017