ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue is showing surprising and inexplicable reluctance in proceeding against the six custom officials who allegedly colluded with the importers and fraudulently examined, assessed and released from the customs collectorate Islamabad more than one hundred consignments of branded and expensive mobile phones causing to the government a revenue loss of about Rs360 million.
According to details, a person named Zohaib Hassan filed before the chief collector of customs Islamabad Imran Khan Mohmand on December 7 a complaint that certain custom examiners and appraisers of Islamabad customs Collectorate had colluded with two importers, namely, Al Hamad Enterprises and Pak China Traders in wrongly examining, under assessing and fraudulently releasing around one hundred consignments of branded mobile phones causing a revenue loss of Rs360 millions.
The complainant alleged that even after the post clearance audit department of FBR had caught the scam and had asked the Islamabad customs collectorate to fully unearth the revenue losses caused, the authorities in Islamabad customs collectorate had restricted themselves only to the audit of six consignments in which they found that the importers had declared on their import documents filed by them before the customs 9946 mobile phones but the six examining officers and appraising officers fraudulently examined and assessed to duty and taxes only 5989 mobile phones releasing the remaining 3957 mobile phones without duty and taxes, whitewashing their IMEI numbers and helping the fraudulent importers get from PTA the type approvals for these phones without payment of leviable duty and taxes.
The complainant Zohaib Hassan asked the chief collector to extend the audit of this scam to the last two years in public interest and to file an FIR against the perpetrators of fraud.
Sources said that pressured under the truth and substance in the complaint filed before him, the chief collector Islamabad got the FIR registered but dishonestly and cleverly omitted from FIR the names of the six customs examiners and appraisers who were found to have wrongfully examined and fraudulently cleared 3967 mobile phones without payment of duty and taxes.
When this scribe put a question to the member customs operations Mukarram Jah Ansari as to why the names of custom officials colluding in the scam and instrumental in causing a massive revenue loss had not been included in the FIR, the member customs circumvented the real question and said that only importers had been implicated in the FIR because they had failed to deposit the revenue lost in the six consignments audited by the collectorate.
Sources disclosed that the high ups of customs collectorate Islamabad knew all too well what ingredients constituted the offences charged in FIR, that failure to deposit the lost revenue was not one of those ingredients and that the offences so charged in FIR fully encompass the acts and omissions of the six custom officials in the six consignments they examined, assessed and released inappropriately causing a huge revenue loss.
Sources said that this mobile phones scam was a typical instance of the revenue loss scams in which customs functionaries right from the customs examiners and appraisers to the customs department’s high ups form a chain tightly woven in collusion with the proceeds of collusion filtering systematically down side up.
Sources said that Islamabad mobile phone scam was not the only one in which senior and supervisory custom officers had exonerated the involved custom officials from criminal proceedings. There were, the sources added, five styles of the senior custom officers’ protection to the examiners and appraisers who cause massive revenue losses in the regularly recurring customs scams.
First, in the scams which do not catch public eye but are within the knowledge of senior custom officers, the seniors normally do take no action; second, in the scams which surface to public attention, the seniors omit the names of involved custom officials from FIR and choose to proceed only against the importers; third, in the scams in which the seniors are somehow under pressure to proceed against the involved custom officials, the seniors exonerate the involved custom officials from charge during the course of investigations; fourth, in the regularly recurring thefts of goods from customs warehouses scams, the seniors do not lodge FIRs with police and instead themselves lodge FIRs under the inapplicable and irrelevant customs law and such dishonest proceedings initiated under an inapplicable law finally end in nothing and fifth, in the scams where custom intelligence chooses to register an FIR, the seniors custom officers of the collectorate in which a scam takes place rush to register a second FIR of the same incident contrary to the decisions of supreme court in order to protect the involved custom officials from the risk of custom intelligence proceedings.
All these modes and manners of protection extended by the senior and supervisory custom officers to the customs examiners and appraisers who are the basic functional units in money making have eroded the concept of accountability and have massively promoted revenue loss scams in the custom department.
Surprisingly, even the finance ministers have claimed in the past that government revenue worth more than 500 billion rupees are misappropriated every year in FBR How these revenue losses occur is manifestly evident from the recurring customs scams and the revenue loss promoting behaviour of the senior customs hierarchy. Still the governments look fearful of taking the FBR to task for any of the crimes and offences which take place inside the revenue body causing to the government massive revenue losses every day, every month.
Sources said that the customs department feels much relieved in finding one of the retired customs officers for the first time sitting as the Federal Tax Ombudsman who, if so pleased, could put a full stop to the continuing revenue losses from rising maladministration in the FBR’s field formations.
Sources said that lodging a hollow and badly drafted FIR of the Islamabad mobile phone scam dishonestly omitting from it the names of six custom examiners and appraisers who were instrumental in the execution of the scam and disseminating the contents of this untrue and fictitious FIR as a great feat of the Islamabad customs collectorate was all a move of the senior custom officers to drift attention from their actual cleverness of omitting from FIR the names of the customs examiners and appraisers who are allegedly the true operators of the mobile phone scam.
Islamabad customs collectorate and it’s chief collector will be doing the real rather than a fictitious job when they will extend audit of the mobile phone scam from six consignments to over hundred consignments allegedly cleared fraudulently in the last two years from the Islamabad custom collectorate and will initiate criminal proceedings against all those involved including importers and their departmental facilitators in the execution of the scam.
It has been alleged that a major part of those hundred consignments which still remains unaudited forms so far the hidden part of the mobile phone scam.
The sources added that only a faithful and honest investigation of these hundred consignment by a combined team constituted from the formations like post clearance audit, Internal audit and the directorate general of law and Prosecution could bring out the total and massive revenue loss caused in this scam and could hold accountable all the involved character without fear or favour.
The scribe also requested Chief Collector Imran Mohmand as well as Collector Customs Islamabad Hasan Saqib for comments but no reply was received till filing of story.
