KARACHI: The Customs Court showed displeasured and directed counsel to produce their clients Zor Talab Khan, Umara Khan, Muhammad Hassan and Muhammad Hamza before the court on next date of hearing, who were booked in using 6 benami accounts to conduct business and evaded taxes more than Rs1 billion and also involved in money laundering.
On 4 December 2019, case was fixed for copies supply to accused persons, however, some of suspects did not appear before the court, and therefore, court canceled copies supply matter and showed its displeasures and directed counsel to make sure appearance of his clients 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 June 14, 2012 to July 13, 2017 and total amount transited Rs8.497 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.
