KARACHI: The Customs Court extended pre-arrest bail to suspect namely Zor Talab Khan and others, who were booked in a case of using 6 benami accounts to conduct business and evade taxes of more than Rs 1 billion. They were also involved in money laundering.
On 18 April, 2020, counsel for above-mentioned suspects appeared before the court, special prosecutor for customs department and investigation officer also attended the court. During the hearing, investigation officer sought further time to complete investigation and submission of final charge sheet.
After the hearing, court extended pre-arrest bail of suspects and directed investigation officer to complete investigation and submit final charge sheet on next date of hearing.
According to the first information report (FIR), suspects namely Zor Talab Khan, Umara Khan, Muhammad Hassan and Muhammad Hamza and informed that 06 bank accounts were opened by suspect Zor Talab Khan during 14 June, 2012 to 13 July, 2017 and total amount Rs 8.497 billion transited, and when prosecution issued notice to suspect Zor Talab Khan then 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 were illegally using these bank accounts for evading taxes.
He further submitted that during the investigation, it was revealed that above-mentioned suspects obtained tax exemption certificates from deputy commissioner Buner, and 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 nondeclared business and by using these benami accounts.
He further disclosed that above mentioned suspects have caused a loss to government exchequer worth Rs 1,261,104,196 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.
