KARACHI: The Customs Court extended interim pre-arrest bail of suspects Javed Karim Sebhai, Muhammad Wasiq and Hoshing P. Sidhwa, directors of M/s Shaheen Air International Ltd who were allegedly involved for committing tax fraud by deliberately avoiding to deposit the government dues amounting to Rs955,050,000 deducted/withheld from customers/passengers.
On 2 October 2019, the above-mentioned suspects appeared before the court along with their counsels and argued for confirmation of pre-arrest bail, however, investigation officer sought further time to submit final charge sheet. The court directed special prosecutor for customs department to finalize arguments on suspects’ pre-arrest bail applications and extended their bail for next date of hearing.
According to the first information report (FIR), a team authorized by commissioner-IR, Karachi was deputed to recover the government dues and every legal course was adopted to get hold of the revenues, however, the department was unable to recover the same and presently the above taxpayer has closed down its operations and the registered office is found closed.
Investigation officer has submitted that registered persons are non-operational fraudsters and jointly committed the tax fraud by escaping from the premises, closing down the operations and fraudulently avoiding to pay sales tax & federal excise duty. By committing this tax fraud, they have deprived government exchequer of its legitimate revenue to the tune of Rs7,433,869,356.
He argued that taxpayer has thus violated the provisions of sales tax act, 1990 & federal excise act, 2005 and FIR is lodged accordingly and further investigation in respect of directors of the company, owners of declared premises, properties of the company are in progress.
