Sources told Business Recorder here on Saturday that the matter of growth in illicit trade of local branded cigarettes and the consequent loss of government revenue were always seriously taken by FBR. After taking over the charge of Director General I&I-IR, Shad Muhammad took up the mission of strengthening the country wide campaign against the curse of illicit trade of cigarettes.
The Directorate General has conducted seven successful raids and seized 13,490,000 sticks of illicit cigarettes in three different cities. According to sources, the newly established mobile squad of Directorate of Intelligence & Investigation-IR, Peshawar gathered information about storage of large quantity of counterfeit cigarettes in four godowns located at Chughal Pura, near Ring Road Bridge, Peshawar. Accordingly, a team authorized under Section 26 and 45 of Federal Excise Act, 2005 read with Rule 62 of the Federal Excise Rules, 2005 visited the aforementioned godowns on 10.08.2017. The godowns were unlocked and 800 cartons (8 million sticks approximately) of various brands including Gold Leaf, Red & White, Morven, Capstan, Gold Flake and Pine, etc, were taken into custody by the Directorate.
The Directorate of I&I-IR, Hyderabad, had conducted five raids at different places. First raid was conducted on 03.08.2017 at the premises of M/s Pardeep Mumar, Latif Abad, Hyderabad, and remaining raids were conducted on 10.08.2017. During first raid, 49 cartons (0.49 million sticks) of various brands of City, Platinum, Empire and ORIS were taken into custody from M/s Babu Rizwan Distribution, Badin. Second raid was conducted at M/s Aftab Memon Kiryana, Badin and 24 cartons (0.24 million sticks) of various brands including City, ORIS, Gold Mark and Mix were detained. Third raid was conducted at M/s Mir Saleem, Tando Muhammad Khan and 17 cartons (0.17 million sticks) of various brands including Leader, Sindhbad, Olympic, Hero, Bonus etc were detained. The fourth raid was conducted at M/s Ashraf Soomro, Tando Muhammad Khan and 8 carton (0.08 million sticks) of various brands including T20, National were taken into custody for further enquiry and verification. The Directorate of I&I-IR, Lahore has assisted RTO, Sialkot in exercise of Section 25 of Federal Excise Act, 2005 and Section 40 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990 to conduct a raid at a premises located at Kunjah Road on 02.08.2017. The combined team of RTO and Directorate seized four million 30 thousands sticks of Café, Medal Gold, County and M&J. Shad Muhammad has appreciated the efforts of his team.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017