KARACHI: In consonance with the Federal government’s initiative to curb activities falling under grey spectrum like smuggling of goods and under-invoicing/mis-declaration in imports and Money Laundering, the Directorate of Intelligence and Investigation-Customs Karachi, under the leadership and active guidance of Director General Customs Intelligence Mr. Faiz Ahmad Chadhar, chalked out multipronged strategy to achieve the desired results.
To intensify crack down against smuggling the coordination with other Law Enforcement agencies particularly Sindh Rangers, Police and the Sister Intelligence Agencies was improved to target the no-go areas of smuggled goods like Yousuf Goth, Sohrab Goth, Aram Bagh, Joria Bazar, Lee Market, Sheershah and Tariq Road.
With unprecedented support and participation of these LEAs, Customs Intelligence, Karachi was able to seize goods worth Billions in face of stiff resistance faced from miscreants. With these consecutive operations, the smugglers were not only forced to face huge financial losses and arrests but the myth of no-go places was shattered.
The seized smuggled goods include fabric, cigarettes, betel-nuts, tyres, auto parts, electronics and others. Customs Intelligence has been able to make seizures of smuggled goods valuing more than Rs 5 Billion in 5 months (July 23- Nov 23) which are 570% higher than the seizures of smuggled goods worth Rs 747 Million in the corresponding period of 5 months last year.
As second part of the strategy, supervision of all import and export Customs clearances at seaports and airport was improved through enhanced vigilance. As a result cases of under-invoicing, mis-declaration and misuse of concessions, worth more than Rs 5.4 billion were made on the trade side in the last 5 months.
Similarly to augment, the government efforts of controlling illegal flight of dollars, five cases of Money Laundering involving illegal transfer of $150 million were detected and FIRs were lodged. Important thing is that in these cases the AML Circle of FIA was also taken on board so that the Hawala/Hundi operators through which this amount was transferred abroad could be tracked down.
Being eyes and ears of Customs Department a number of advance ALERTs were also issued as preemptive measures for corrections in advance. It is believed that the Alertness and information based enforcement actions by Customs Intelligence Karachi became one of the factors that resulted in significant increase in revenue on imports collected through the four Karachi based Appraisement Collectorates and one Air Fright Unit.
The Director General appreciated the efforts of the Director Mr. Habib Ahmad and his team including Additional Directors Mr. Afzal Watto, Mr. Inamullah Wazir, Deputy Directors Mr. Wasif Malik, Abeer Javed and Mr. Saud Khan.