KARACHI: The committee, constituted to probe into the Vehicles Amnesty Scheme (VAS) scam, has presented a charge sheet before Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) against six Customs officials including appraisers and principal appraisers, who were involved in violation of SRO 144(I)/2012.
The sources informed Customs Today that the committee, headed Additional Collector-ADC Irfan Javed, in the “charge sheet” stated that the Customs officials who were deployed in the Car Group (Group-VII) during the year2012-13 were involved in clearance of around 480 vehicles of amnesty scheme under Special Gift Scheme (SGS) and violated the SRO144 (I)/2012 which does not allow to clear any vehicle having age-limit more than three and a half year.
Irfan Javed in the charge sheet further recommended the authorities concerned of FBR to take cohesive action against those Customs officials who were involved into the scam.
It is pertinent to mention here that the FBR authorities concerned had handed over the case to the Committee in the month of Jan 2015 and afterwards the Committee held several hearings into the case and summoned the Customs officials who were deployed in the Car Group at that time and also asked the departmental representative to present documents related to the case as per requisition.
The sources informed Customs Today that the investigation was taken more than five months due to the delayed response of Customs officials to whom the inquiry was being conducted.
The sources further disclosed that the charges against six Customs officials including appraisers and principal appraisers have been established and the Committee suggested the FBR authorities to take departmental action against them and imposed penalty as per legal procedure.
