KARACHI: The Customs Court granted pre-arrest bail to suspects namely Muhammad Hassan and Muhammad Hamza against the surety of Rs 20 lac each who were booked in using benami 6 accounts to conduct business and evaded taxes more than Rs1 billion and also involved in money laundering.
On April 17, 2019, both suspects appeared before their counsel and submitted surety of Rs20 lac each, therefore, court accepted their surety and sent for verification of documents and CNIC.
Earlier, investigation officer submitted first information report against suspects namely Zor Talab Khan, Umara Khan, Muhammad Hassan and Muhammad Hamza and informed that 6 bank accounts were opened by suspect Zor Talab Khan during June 14, 2012 to July 13, 2017 and total amount transited Rs 8.497 billion and when prosecution issued notice to suspect Zor Talab Khan than he replied that he was totally unaware of the bank accounts and these bank accounts were being used by his 3 friends and these people obtained his CNIC under some pretexts and opened these accounts and conducted these transactions and he was never told that they are illegally using these bank accounts for evading taxes.
He further submitted that during the investigation, it was revealed that above mentioned suspects have obtained tax exemption certificates from deputy commissioner Buner as come off from district Buner which is included provincially administered tribal area (FATA) and hence a tax free area with the totally unrelated counter parties, multiple transactions have been done with totally irrelevant parties such as paint shop, transporter, oil business, spare parts, scrap business and electrics goods etc, which indicate that marble business registration and fake exemption certificates are only smokescreen from tax evasion by doing non declared business and by using these benami accounts.
He further disclosed that above mentioned suspects have caused a loss to government exchequer worth Rs1,261,104,196 by willfully commissioning offences of concealment of income, acquiring assets from proceeds of crime as defined in Section 2 (Q) of Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010 by committing predicate offence of tax evasion as defined in Section 2 (s) of Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2010.
