KARACHI: Traders of fruits and vegetables etc. have submitted documents and copies of Goods Declaration (GD) pertaining to the 100 containers that were imported from Afghanistan through Torkham border after payment of duty and taxes.
The documents were presented to Investigation Officer (IO) of MC Preventive. It may be mentioned here that MCC Preventive has lodged an FIR involving 355 containers that were allegedly cleared through Torkham without payment of duty and taxes.
Investigation had revealed that a staggering number of 355 such vehicles have managed to leave the customs premises without paying any duty/taxes and filing of GDs. These vehicles obtained entry passes, presented to NLC Weigh Bridge and then without filing of GD and or getting themselves presented to the customs left the premises against manual gate passes issued to them at the Gate out stage.
These findings are based on threadbare analysis of all the gate passes, weighment slips, entry passes, manual registers and Gate Out data of Weboc. It is pertinent to mention here that these vehicles pertain to the months of September, October and November 2019 only and further scrutiny is under way. This malpractice deprived the government exchequer of colossal legitimate revenue.
An official said that around 8 PRAL officials were sitting at Torkham station despite the fact that they had no job in WeBOC operations at the Customs station. The official said these PRAL officials had connections with Customs agents and were using the user IDs of Appraisement staff. It may be mentioned here that PRAL staff was found involved in certain scams at Torkham before.
Traders were of the view that the authorities should not generalize the traders at Torkham as most of them were doing legitimate business and such propaganda would discourage the legal business activities.