KARACHI: The Directorate General of Intelligence and Investigation, Karachi has arrested an official of leading mobile phone company – Q-Mobile – on Wednesday and raids were carried for arrest of company’s chairman for committing sales tax fraud of Rs58 million.
The directorate also recovered Rs40 million from the company with the pledge the remaining amount to be paid on Thursday (today).
Officials at the directorate told Customnews.pk that FIR had been lodged against the company and arrested Baber Sultan, manager (Operation) of Q-Mobile and the other wanted top official Zeeshan Akhtar, Chairman, Q-Mobile was declared absconder in the case.
As per details, the DG I&I, Inland Revenue, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), Karachi discovered invoices of the company issued to media houses for advertisement but the due amount deducted as sales tax on services was not deposited to national exchequer.
The directorate scrutinized the transactions detailed prior June 2011 when the FBR had mandate to collect sales tax on services. The company rejected the FBR blame and argued that the sales tax on services was in the ambit of provincial government.
The directorate further conducted scrutiny of transactions made through another company namely M/s. Orient and discovered that the Q-Mobile made transactions with the two companies namely M/s. Digicom and M/s. Digicom Trading, where one of the companies identified as fake.
The directorate got approval for conducting raids after lodging FIR for arrests of its official and took help police and intelligence agencies to track down the culprits.
However, later in Wednesday evening the company finally surrendered and paid an amount of Rs40 million through pay order to tax authorities with promise to pay the remaining Rs18 million today.
Q-Mobile, which is one of the largest selling mobile phones in Pakistan and expanded rapidly during past few years had many tax issues. Recently, two partners of the company i.e. Digicom and New Allied Electronics paid over Rs1 billion after Islamabad High Court’s judgment in FBR favour in the case of sales tax on imported phone sets.