KARACHI: A few customs officials at Port Qasim have turned a blind eye on clearance of banned and non-certified goods worth billions of rupees through green channel by declaring as scrap.
Customs Today has been reporting on misuse of green channel by a few senior customs officials. Our information proved true when 6 containers of betel nuts were caught by Customs Preventive on 21 February in a raid at a godown in Korangi Industrial Area and these containers were actually smuggled from Port Qasim green channel as scrap.
Qamar Thallo, spokesperson of Customs Preventive, told Customs Today that ambit of investigations has been widened due to possibility that smugglers might have cleared hundreds of other such containers through green channel. Above importer got cleared 14 containers of betel nuts through green channel.
“More such raids and confiscation of betel nuts’ consignments will be conducted in coming days,” he said.
It is worth mentioning that 188 containers of betel nuts are stuck up at ports. Since legal import is stopped, goods are being smuggled. The importer namely M/s Jebel Ali dumped the containers in Korangi area where the raid took place.
Customs Appraisement South comprising Appraisement East, MCC Appraisement West and MCC Port Qasim have put all consignments coming from Jebel Ali on red channel after the confiscation in Korangi, a customs official revealed.
In the meantime, the customs officials involved in the scam of clearing the consignments become more active to save their skin including ADC Yasin Murtaza and others.
It is pertinent to mention that on 2nd February, a smuggling bid of 15,520 liters of dual use precursor acetic anhydride worth around $1.5 million was foiled at Port Qasim. The acetic anhydride, a main ingredient for preparing narcotics substance as well as making highly dangerous explosives by the terrorist outfits was shipped from Poland for a fake Peshawar-based importer M/s Pak Traders.
Sources said that these consignments were imported on fake names, IDs and addresses so it could only be done with the help of customs officials at Port Qasim who were clearing these goods through green channel and supporting these unknown smugglers of green channel.
Sources revealed the facility of green channel is still being misused at MCC-Appraisement Port Qasim as 200 to 300 containers of Iron-Steel scrap are being cleared through green channel despite the fact that these items are not allowed to be cleared through green channel, causing loss to exchequer worth billions.
Customs Today had reported earlier that ADC Yasin Murtaza, under a plan, was keeping entire staff & place busy with futile re-examinations and re-assessments of genuine importers so that his accomplices from the green channel smugglers get a good chance to smuggle goods without examination in green channel. This is giving rise to huge smuggling through green channel.
Genuine importers who are losing their competition in the market due to presence of goods smuggled through green channel have appealed to Member Customs Zahid Khokhar to take prompt action to stop misuse of the facility at Port Qasim.
