LAHORE: Collectorate of Customs Appraisement East have registered a first information report (FIR) that a container of imported paper was substituted while moving under bond from Port Qasim in Karachi to a dry port in Lahore, removing goods from customs control without payment of duty and taxes.
The FIR No. 02/2026, was submitted Sept. 30 by Inspector Rao Kamran Nasir of the Collectorate of Customs Appraisement (East) at the Dryport in Mughalpura, Lahore. The case was pursued on the instructions of Lahore Collector Iram Sohail. No one has been convicted, and the accusations are allegations at this stage.
The complaint names as accused the owners and directors of importer Green Pak Enterprises, clearing agent EQA Corporation, bonded carrier Pak Shaheen Cargo Services and NLC Smart Solutions (Pvt) Ltd., along with the driver of the transporting vehicle and unidentified others. It alleges they acted “in connivance” to substitute the container or its cargo. The report does not say what role NLC Smart Solutions is alleged to have played.
According to the report, the consignment of printed and mis-printed paper rolls and sheets, weighing 27.27 metric tons, was declared under a transit document dated Aug. 18 and sealed at Port Qasim. The Pakistan Customs Container Security System recorded the dispatch entry as certified Sept. 5.
When the 40-foot container, numbered INKU6514441, arrived at the Lahore dry port on Sept. 8, officials found a shipper’s seal numbered 2919203 instead of the 026520 declared on the transport document, the report says. The inspector at the gate noted that the seal appeared to have been changed after examination at Karachi.
A joint examination on Sept. 25 involving the customs collectorate, the Directorate of Transit Trade and a team from the Punjab Forensic Science Authority found the customs bolt seal intact but confirmed the shipper-seal mismatch, the report says.
Transit Trade Director Mona Aslam personally attended the examination. The Federal Board of Revenue has given the Directorate of Transit Trade the authority to examine transshipment, or TP, consignments, officials said.
The cargo weighed 27,480 kilograms, about 210 kilograms more than declared. Investigators also say photographs of the container being examined at Karachi, received through WhatsApp, showed goods packed in cartons, while the cargo at Lahore consisted of paper rolls. The report adds that the registration-number panel on the Lahore container sat on a fresh band of red paint, in contrast to worn stenciling in the Karachi images. The Lahore door showed heavy rust pitting absent in the Karachi photos.
The container number carries a valid check digit, so the discrepancy is not a typing error but is “consistent with” the number having been reproduced on a substitute container, the report says. X-ray scans taken at Port Qasim on Aug. 18 and again at an NLC dry port in Lahore on Sept. 23-24 showed materially different cargo profiles, it adds.
Officials said two more containers carrying alcohol and acetate tow have reached Lahore, and two similar containers are at the Karachi port.
Officials said Director General Irfan Javed, Karachi Director Rashid Munir and Principal Appraiser Amjad Iqbal have completed their groundwork for a major crackdown on the misuse of transshipment cargo.
The complaint invokes Sections 32, 32A, 79 and 121 of the Customs Act, 1969, punishable under Section 156(1), and asks for investigation to identify the perpetrators and recover the diverted goods. Both seals have been sent for forensic analysis, and the laboratory’s report is still awaited.
