KARACHI: An appellate bench of High Court of Sindh (SHC), Mr. Justice Abdul Rasool Memon and Mr. Justice Agha Faisal deferred hearing of a number of identical petitions filed Saiban International, Atif Brothers, W.T.A, the importers of tyres till Aug 13.
According to details Pakistan Customs found the petitioners involved in evasion of duties and taxes in clearance of pneumatic rubber tyres.
The petitioners were served with Demand-Cum-Explanation Notice and during further investigation and inquiry some other importers too were found involved in such clandestine crime of under deceleration of numerical quantity of tyres and deprived government from collection of legitimate duty and taxes.
The bench earlier heard Kashif Nazir counsel for petitioners who requested the bench to order provisional release, of consignment and requested that Petitioner’s consignments may not be withheld or detained on account of some outstanding demand and its recovery. [the_ad id=”31605″] Khalid Rajpar Advocate appearing for the department (MCC-WEST), filed comments in all petitions. He submitted that petitioners were involved in fiscal fraud, which has been unearthed by the department. He said previously a number of consignments were got cleared by adopting similar modus operandendi wherein numerical quantity was shown less than actual. He said that during investigations it was found that M/s Masoom International, electronically filed a goods Declaration KAPW-166679-11-04-2018 for clearance of (i) TYRE SIZE 11.00-R20-18PR under PCT heading 4011.2090 (ii) TYRE SIZE 650-14-10PR under PCT heading 4011.2010 at declared invoice US$ 43976.24/. Importer determined his liability of payment of applicable duties and taxes and sought clearance u/s 79(1) Customs Act, 1969. In order to check as to whether importer has correctly paid the legitimate amount of duties and taxes, the reference GD was selected for scrutiny in terms of section 80 of the Customs Act, 196 which revealed the actual number of items. He submitted that various importers of tyres have been put on strict vigilance, so as to save government from fiscal fraud and loss of legitimate duty and taxes.
The bench after hearing both sides at length deferred further hearing till August 13.