KARACHI: A raiding team of Collectorate of Customs, Appraisement, West on Saturday seized four containers from Al-Hamd International Container Terminal (AICT) and recovered 31112 mobile phones and tablets during a raid here yesterday.
According to details, Collector Customs West Shehnaz Maqbool received a tip off that huge quantity of mobile phones and others would be cleared from the port by misdeclaration made in the bill of landing B/L.
The Collector Customs Appraisement West constituted a raiding party headed by Deputy Collector, R&D, Imran Rasool which kept the suspicious containers under watch and lastly seized the same in the presence of officials of intelligence and other security agencies.
The containers belonged to Messers Arham & Co, Lahore, Rana Enterprises the initial investigations revealed.
The raiding party opened all the four containers and found that the container were stuffed with mobile phones and tablets of different branch while the B/Ls declared the containers to have garment accessories, refrigerator parts and disperse dyes.
According to estimates, the seized mobile phones and tablet are worth rupees 400 million.
A case has been registered and further investigations are underway. The detection of the case may lead to startling disclosures as custom officials have successfully tracked the owners, clearing agent and others who colluded to defraud the national exchequer of duty and taxes worth millions of rupees.