KARACHI: Director General Afghan Transit Trade, Khawar Fareed Manika has expressed his displeasure over the contents of Interim Challan submitted before the Court regarding pilferage of US Army/NATO/ISAF transit cargo and advised the team to include names of several persons in the list of prime accused while furnishing the final challan.
According to details reaching Customnews.pk, Manika had a meeting with senior officers of Transit Trade and advised them to complete the final challan as soon as possible.
The meeting developed the consensus that bonded carrier was not involved in this pilferage but it was nominated in the FIR as per the provisions of CGO-10 and the same CGO-10 requires that the focal person of US Consulate should be nominated in the FIR vis-a-vis the final challan.
Manika noted that several persons including Irfan Afridi, Rehan Afridi and the focal person of the US Consulate were mentioned in the interim challan as main culprits involved in the pilferage or illegal removal of goods from the containers of US forces in Afghanistan. These containers were being transported to Dubai via Torkham crossing and then Port Qasim, Karachi.
However, names of these persons were not in the list of accused. Manika has advised the team to include Irfan Afridi, Rehan Afridi, Shahzad Rasool and the focal person of US Consulate looking after transportation of US Army/NATO/ISAF cargo.
Irfan Afridi is the main person carrying out pilferage of cargo in Pakistan and Afghanistan with the help of his associates while Rehan Afridi is the cousin of Irfan Afridi and is a broker of vehicles. He arranged the vehicles with the help of Tikka Khan.
Manika appreciated Director Transit Trade Wajid Ali and his team for pursuing the investigations without taking any influence particularly the raid on the office of M/s Bilal Associates, which was a very timely move and helped a lot in the investigations and provided sufficient and concrete evidence against the culprits.
Manika said they had collected all the evidence adding that it was an international chain who was involved in this huge scam and were bringing bad name to the country.
Manika vowed that the prosecution was quite strong and the culprits would be brought to task.
The authorities have also found that the scam was not just limited to the pilferage. In fact the goods were insured at highly exaggerated rates and then the same were pilfered and the contractor then claimed the insurance.
The subject consignment comprising 22 containers were insured a price of $14 million and the 18 generators that went missing were insured at a declared price of $4.3 million.
It may be mentioned here that recently Preventive Collectorate found a US Army cargo being emptied at a warehouse at Port Qasim. One container was being emptied and several others were also stocked at the same warehouse. Bonded carrier M/s Water Link was the carrier of these containers.
Preventive Collectorate contacted US Consulate twice and after the third follow-up, US consulate said that FBI team would come and investigate the issue. However, no such team ever arrived, which proves that this pilferage has patronage of some very influential quarters.
It may be recalled that when Supreme Court of Pakistan took suo moto action in Karachi law & order case and there were reports that US Army/NATO/ISAF cargo was pilfered and the money was being used by terrorist groups, the US authorities denied that any of their containers were missing.