Under the leadership of Director General Customs Intelligence Shaukat Ali, the agency has foiled major attempts in the first half of November and raided many godown/dumping places to recover smuggled mobile phones valuing over Rs 1,000 million in Karachi, Lahore and Quetta. The action has also prevented the country from many untoward incidents and terrorist activities wherein such kind of smuggled mobile phones are used.
Sources said that specific information was received by the customs Intelligence that huge quantity of smuggled mobile phone sets is secreted/stored in the posh area of DHA, Karachi, for disposal in the local market. It was further disclosed by the sources that distributors of a Chinese mobile phone company in Pakistan, were involved in smuggling huge quantity of mobile phones.
After hectic efforts, the team located suspected residential premises in DHA, Karachi and search after raid resulted into recovery of 78,160 phone sets of Q Mobile secreted in a bungalow. The CIF value of the above mentioned mobile phone sets is Rs 662 million. Similarly in another raid in Lahore, on the information of Director General Shaukat Ali, Customs Intelligence recovered 10,000 sets of Q Mobile and huge quantity of mobile accessories valuing Rs 350 million. The smuggled goods were recovered from a godown during a raid at Mall in Lahore. Huge quantity of smuggled mobile phones was also recovered by the Directorate General of Customs Intelligence at Faisalabad. Value of the seized mobiles in this case is Rs 26 million.
Seizure of such a huge quantity of Q Mobile phone sets has raised many questions and Customs Intelligence has initiated a comprehensive inquiry to unearth the real culprits of the crime.
Sources added that these cases involve huge illegal transfer of money from Pakistan. Accordingly, Customs Intelligence has also initiated preliminary money laundering investigations in these cases. Furthermore, no record of international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) of these phone sets is available with the PTA. Such mobile phones are an easy tool to execute terrorist activities.
Sources added that the smuggling of mobile phones is also done at large scale through transit trade to Afghanistan. Mobile phones are transited to the Afghanistan and subsequently smuggled back into Pakistan. An in-depth investigation by the Customs Intelligence covering these aspects is underway.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017