KARACHI: Customs Today unearthed the mega scams of green channel, yellow channel, TP at Karachi east collectorate by Dost Muhammad, Incharge R&D.
Sources exposed another mega scam of ‘bonded warehouse’ by the same team. There are many kinds of bonded warehouses authorised by Customs. The license holder of bonded warehouse can clear the goods at the port without paying any duties. When customs duty is not paid, then goods are not even checked properly.
Sources said the bonded warehouse itself is considered as a port of Pakistan for practical purposes. When the goods are cleared from the port then it is moved to the bonded warehouse without paying any duties. The goods are under physical charge of customs officers. Customs officers are posted at the bonded warehouse so only they can remove the goods from the bonded warehouse. At the time of removal of goods from the bonded warehouse, the person taking the goods has to pay duties if duties are applicable. If the goods are taken by a manufacturer who wants to export the finished goods then he does not pay duties.
Sources further revealed that now Dost Muhammad and his network of corrupt officers have devised a plan to mint money out of this. They bring banned chemicals used for narcotics, IEDs, or liquor, etc. mixed with lower value goods. They move the goods to a bonded warehouse in connivance with the warehouse owners. At the bonded warehouse, since the goods are in the custody of customs staff hence they remove the banned items without putting it in record. Later on they make an entry in register that all goods are lower value goods so removed from warehouse. This is same as Transshipment TP scam where the goods are removed on the route by cutting the doors. There the goods are removed from bonded carriers. Here they remove from bonded warehouse. In this case, the smugglers don’t even open the container doors and replace the physical goods with lower value goods rather they just make an entry in the register that lower value goods are removed.
Sources said the license owners of these bonded warehouses pay weekly/monthly bribe to R&D officials of Karachi east. Dost assigned frontmen like Saleem Khan for this work who is an appraiser at R&D. Complete data is available with R&D regarding clearances made by bonded warehouses.
Sources said in one of the incidences, there was a dispute on monthly bribe amounts that the license owner delayed. The issue widely spread in the customs department so they had to lodge an FIR. With this FIR, the entire above scam came into the picture. The FIR says that merely for Rs 15,000 the goods of bonded warehouse were removed. It is obvious when the goods are removed from the warehouse before the entry, then any other lower value goods can be shown on the register later. This way, duty of millions of rupees goes unpaid just for the sake of mere Rs. 15,000. There are 100s of containers that are moved to bonded warehouses and billions of rupees of Pakistan revenue is robbed.
Copy of FIR is attached below and further details can be taken from there too.
Sources said the physical charge of the goods in bonded warehouse remains with customs staff posted at the bonded warehouse. The customs staff handles all in and out of the goods at the bonded warehouse. Lot of goods were detected removed without entry in the registers. This obviously means that the customs staff at the warehouse in connivance with the customs R&D official Dost at the Karachi east collectorate are involved in the scam. But, the bad intentions of customs staff in lodging the FIR is clear by the fact that not even one customs staff name is mentioned in the FIR as accused!!
