KARACHI:- The Model Customs Collectorate, Peshawar sold 13450 bags of sugar belonging to Choudhry Sugar Mills confiscated by the MCC in a tax rebate fraud case.
The sugar mill was owned by a member of Nawaz Sharif family and was meant for export to Afghanistan but instead of export, it was sold within Pakistan and rebate was claimed. The Custom Officials of Peshawar Collectorate detected the fraud and despite involvement of an elite registered the FIR followed by raids at Godowns in Peshawar city. The consignment was confiscated in September 2015 and till date no claimant came. After the recent earth quake in Northern areas of Pakistan , Collector Customs, MCC Peshawar Qurban Ali Khan and Additional Collector Aftab Haider decided to sell the sugar bags to Utility Stors Corporation at low rates but with the condition that this sugar would be sold at USC stores at Chitral, Upper Dir and Shangla.
Earlier in September, a 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 was 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.