KARACHI: The MCC Peshawar has booked sugar miller, customs agent and PRAL staff in the export subsidy fraud as the gang evaded duty/taxes and attempted to fraudulently avail huge amount of export subsidy in respect of fake exports of sugar to Afghanistan.
FIR has been registered against Choudhry Sugar Mills, M/s Ibrab Customs Clearing and M/s Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) in respect of fake export of 500 MT of Sugar from Torkham border to Afghanistan during April 2015-August 2015.
The custom value of the case was evaluated to be $225000 with duty and taxes involved estimated to be Rs1.836 million.
The FIR was lodged by Inspector Yaqoob Shah of Customs PS Torkham who stated that Assistant Collector Custom Station Torkham on receipt of information about export subsidy fraud case, constituted an audit team on August 18, 2015. The audit team retrieved data from PRAL pertaining to the export of Sugar for the period 01-04-2015 to 12-08-2015 for cross verification of the exports with manual record maintained by the Customs staff at Torkham.
The team upon scrutiny found that Goods Declaration (GDs) were available in the manual record but found tampered with in the system.
It was noted in the FIR that the exporter got the data tampered in PRAL system with the connivance of PRAL staff.
The act of the exporter and clearing agent amounts to fiscal fraud as the accused have not made the actual export whereby besides depriving the state of foreign exchange worth $225000 have also caused loss to the revenues of the state in terms of EDS ( Export Development Surcharge) withholding tax and sales tax.
The exporter also evaded Federal Excise Duty to the tune of Rs1.836 million , the FIR said.
The fraud aimed at availing huge amount of subsidy of inland freight of Rs2.0 per Kilogram and cash subsidy on export of Sugar at the rate of Rs8.0 per kilogram allowed on export of Sugar as per decision by Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet (ECC), the FIR said.
Custom sources are terming the registration of first ever FIR in fake Sugar export case to be tip of an iceberg and maintained that stage is now set for unearthing subsidy fraud cases worth billions of rupees involving sugar millers from Punjab and Khyber Pukhtoonkhawa.