KARACHI: The Collectorates at Customs Appraisement South have formed three teams to conduct an audit of bonded warehouses to verify whether the goods in-bonded at these warehouses were present or stolen.[the_ad id=”31605″]Collector MCC Port Qasim Mumtaz Khoso formed a team headed by Assistant Collector Mustafa Zameer to audit the bonds, while Additional Collector Honnak Baloch would monitor the exercise.
Similarly, Collector MCC Appraisement West Wajid Ali formed a team headed by ADC Rehmatullah Vistro and comprising PA Shafiullah, AO Abdul Ghani Soomro, Muhammad Shamaz Saquib, Ibtisam Ghulamullah while Collector MCC Appraisement East Nadeem Memon formed a team comprising DC Rana Arslan, PA Abdul Qayyum, AO Saleem Qaimkhani, Ilyas Ghichki and Shahid Hasan.
There are 29 bonded warehouses and cases have been emerged where in-bonded goods were illegally removed from warehouses of M/s General Services and M/s Iqra Enterprises without payment of duty and taxes causing huge revenue loss to the national exchequer.
The teams of three collectorates have started audit of the bonded warehouses and would submit their report after completing the inventory taking exercise.
Customs has already lodged several FIRs against a number of accused for involvement in illegal removal of goods, and investigations are underway. After the lodging of FIR, Umar Farooq of Lucky Star Steel Industries approached High Court seeking interim relief. Umar Farooq is the prime suspect of the scam.
The Sindh High Court has stayed the FIRs and advised the Customs authorities not to take any coercive action against the accused unless a proper inspection and inventory of the bonded warehouses is prepared.