KARACHI: The Special Court of Customs Taxation and Anti-Smuggling has granted pre-arrest bail to M/s Digicom Trading Private Limited’s director and manager suspects in a case of forging documents for re-export of a consignment that contained 71,400 sets of mobile phones worth Rs 107 million.
Judge Syed Faiz Rasool Rashdi approved the bail for two suspects against surety bonds of Rs200, 000 each.
M/s Digicom Trading Private Limited Director Zeeshan Yousuf and Manager Haris Siddiquie, represented by Advocate Syed Shabeer Hassan Shah moved the court seeking pre-arrest bail.
According to the details of the case, the customs authorities had received a tip-off that a cartel along with other accomplices have planned to get a container cleared fraudulently in the guise of transshipment(TP) but they could not succeeded to shift the container under TP scheme due to fear of being caught by the customs.
Subsequently, they tried to obtain re-export permission from the Model Customs Collectorate Appraisement under the guise of frustrated cargo but their request was refused. Being perplexed with the situation, the same cartel manipulated to clear the goods on payment of duty and taxes at Karachi, instead of filing TP for its transportation to up-country by way of manoeuvring and preparing fake identities and suspiciously managing NOC and authorization.
Consequently, the container, which arrived from Hong Kong and was lying at MTO Yard, West Warf, Karachi was subjected to scrutiny and examination, which led to recovery of 71,400 pieces of mobile phones worth estimated at Rs107.1 million. The container belonged to M/s Zawah Impex and Co. Lahore and the same was to be transported to Lahore under TP scheme.
Suspect Rahim Sultan Ali in collusion with accused Zeeshan attempted to get the goods cleared on payment of duty/taxes through manoeuvring the documents. Haris Siddiquie, employee of M/s Digicom issued the authorization documents. Another suspect Junaid was also involved in the crime whose role would be ascertained during the investigation.
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