KARACHI: On the directives of collector Ashad Jawwad, MCC Appraisement East has issued notices to over a dozen shipping lines to provide complete details regarding consignments processed by M/s AMI Pakistan Pvt Ltd.
The Customs Collectorate Appraisement East is investigating a fiscal fraud wherein a freight forwarder/shipping agent M/s AMI Pakistan in connivance with importers and clearing agents misreported port of loading and origin of the goods at the time of filing import general manifest into the WeBOC.
The shipping lines are directed to provide Master BLs issued by the carrier or any other document showing place of the consignments; export GDs supplied by the exporters at the port of loading; details of financial transactions in respect of these Master BLs; particulars of persons who approached these shipping lines offices for issuance of delivery order and any other information.
Shipping lines have been warned that non compliance of these instructions would tantamount to be concealment of facts.
Earlier, some polyester fabric importers were found of wrongly declaring the port of shipment as China instead of actual Dubai in the import general manifest of the product. The case was detected by MCC Appraisement West.
The fabric was discovered as of Indian origin, which is banned as per the current import policy of Pakistan.
A large number of consignments were shipped from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but a freight forwarder allegedly declared them as approaching from China.
Through this misrepresentation, certain fabric, which is banned to be imported, was brought into the country. Moreover duty and taxes were evaded on hundreds of consignments through claiming inadmissible FTA benefit.
There have been around 17,000 consignments of fabrics imported in the last couple of years, including 2,532 cleared from MCC Appraisement East, 1,791 from MCC Port Qasim, 1,764 from MCC Lahore, 1,097 from MCC Islamabad, 341 from MCC Peshawar, 129 from MCC Faisalabad, 144 from MCC Sialkot and 9,350 fabric consignments were cleared from MCC Appraisement West.
The customs department has already booked M/s AMI Pakistan, several importers and clearing agents for committing fraud and issuing switch bills of lading to clear different goods by mis-declaring the vital information with regard to the shipper’s name, port of loading, country of origin to claim inadmissible free trade agreement benefit and clearing banned products.