KARACHI: An appellate bench of High Court of Sindh comprising Justice Munib Akhtar and Justice Omar Sial aksed a petitioner/importer to explain position and first respond to the serious allegation leveled by the respondent Customs side.
The bench was hearing a number of constitutional petitions filed by Zeeshan Afzal of K.K.Metal Industries, Sialkot.
importer of scrap computers against detention of consignments by Pakistan Customs Appraisement, East on ground of “misuse of trans-shipment facilities, mis-declaration and evasion of duties, taxes and other leviables worth billions of rupees.
When the petitions came up for hearing, counsel for petitioner prayed to the court to order un-blocking of their NTN.
Khalid Rajpar advocate, counsel for respondent department opposed the request on ground that petitioner came to the court with unclean hands. He said that examination of subsequent consignment proved that petitioner is habitual offender and at least three new cases of 100 per cent mis-declaration have been detected. The officers concerned have lodged separate FIRs and proceeding is now going on, Rajpar advocate submitted.
The bench adjourning further proceedings till Nov 13 asked the petitioner to respond to serious allegation leveled by Pakistan Customs in their rejoinder.
According to details petitioner imported a consignment and declared it to be consisting of scrap computers, telephones and other unusable electrical items from which different metals are to retrieved, salvaged, extricated and recycled for re-export. The entire work to be done at processing unit of the petitioner located at Export Processing Zone, Sialkot after the goods were cleared from port at Karachi and trans-shipped to Sialkot EPZ.
The customs however on suspicion conducted an examination jointly by DIT and MCC Appraisement East in which 14,400 Satellite Dish Recievers, mobile phones and other electronic items were found. Besides beer, wine and CLI telephones were also found stuffed.
According to the initial evaluation it was found that importer/ petitioner has evaded duty and taxes worth rupees 84,603,157.
Further investigations lead to the detection of several cases of identical nature in which misuse of transshipment facility, misdeclaration and evasion of custom duty and taxes were established. The FIRs were registered and the goods were confiscated with option of redemption to the importer/petitioner.
Khalid Rajpar advocate representing MCC East on previous hearing firmly opposed the interim relief prayer and informed the bench of modus operandi of the petitioner causing loss of billions of rupees in duty, taxes etc.