KARACHI: Customs Intelligence and Investigation Karachi has lodged two FIRs against several for committing fiscal fraud by electronically filing false and forged import documents and by re-using/mis-using the Electronic Import Forms (EIFs) to declare significantly lower values than those at which goods were sold for export to Pakistan and then remitting the foreign exchange acquired from higher sale proceeds through non-banking/illegal channels by way of money laundering.
Information was passed through Director Engineer Habib Ahmad to Additional Director Afzaal Ahmad Wattoo regarding reuse of EIFs by the importer to defraud national exchequer. Saud Hassan formed a team to pursue the case.
The importers, M/s A.A International and M/s Usmania Traders had imported multiple consignments of solar panels of different watts from China at various collectorates of Customs Appraisement East, West and SAPT. The importer had incorrectly stated the values, by way of under-invoicing, of the imported consignments and declared their unit of measurement in “pieces” so as to deliberately avoid the valuation criteria of US$ 0.20/Watt in terms of the Valuation Ruling No. 1653/2022.
The importer had repeatedly used different EIFs to clear the consignments, which is against the prevalent practice and procedure, whereby one EIF is used in one import transaction/GD only. The importer had concealed the original invoices and packing lists and instead uploaded falsified and fabricated invoices and packing lists, depicting much lower values.
The approved values of all these EIFs was much lower but the importer had cleared multiple consignments using said EIFs at the value of millions of dollars and by doing so concealed millions of dollars. Then the accused sold the goods at higher values and remitted the sale proceed through illegal channels by way of money laundering.
On the directives of Director General Faiz Ahmed, the anti-money laundering is activated and a rigorous crackdown is underway.