KARACHI: The MCC Preventive has lodged an FIR against one Dr. Firoz Ismail, President of M/s Health & Social Welfare for fraudulently evading duty/taxes worth Rs8.46 million.
According to the details of the case, it was known that the subject NGO had been indulged in unscrupulous racket of import of medicines in the garb of donation by claiming undue benefit and inflicting loss to the national exchequer.
The said NGO imported consignments of medicine claiming to be the donation by M/s World in Need of UK and sought clearance under special tariff exemption attracting zero percent duty and sales tax.
To verify the veracity of information a letter to the commercial counselor was sent by the department to confirm/verify the donation is bonafide or otherwise.
The commercial counselor confirmed that such name i.e. World in Need organization does not exist on the given address they had also reported that there was no apparent presence of the organization.
In the next leg of the survey, the office of commercial counselor contacted the representatives of World in Need organization through the contact information available on their website. It is pertinent to mention that the contact details and address mentioned on the letters provided by the company in regard to import of medicines is different from the information available on their website.
During the enquiry by commercial counselor they were informed by the representatives of “World in Need” that being a Church Charity Organization this NGO had no dealing whatsoever with M/s Health and Social Welfare and neither did it provide any medicine nor did pay for any medicine for donation to any other organization or charity.
In the light of above confirmation it was proved that M/s Healthcare and Social Welfare Association (HASWA), Karachi had submitted false and fabricated documents to custom authorities to avail the benefit of special exemption.
It was learnt that Additional Collector Tahir Qureshi detected the scam and with the assistance of Deputy Collector Basit Hussain and Principal Appraiser Iftikhar Mehmood, the entire scheme was busted.
As the previous imports of the said importer were analyzed it was found that some 25 such consignments were cleared on fake and fabricated documents causing loss of hundreds of millions of rupees to the exchequer.
Chief Collector Nazim Saleem and Collector Preventive Tariq Huda have appreciated the officers who unearthed this scam.