LAHORE: Capacity-building sessions for the officers are arranged to develop more skills, which help them achieve the assigned tasks while performing their respective duties.
This was stated by Input/Output Co-efficient Organisation (IOCO) Director Tausif Ahmad Qureshi while talking to Customs Today after giving a lecture to the participants of a capacity-building session. The Directorate of Training, Customs, held a training programme for the customs officers of BS-17-18 in Lahore.
Officers of the Customs Central Region, including the Model Customs Collectorates of Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan, and from other stations attended the session. The senior officials of the Federal Board of Revenue are nominated to train the juniors by giving lectures on different topics and also inform them about their major achievements in the field.
IOCO Director Tausif was also selected for equipping the officers of BS-17-18 with requisite knowledge and empowerment to enhance efficient service delivery in their respective fields. Tausif is a senior officer of Pakistan Customs who has been performing his duties at the Model Customs Collectorates of Multan and Faisalabad as collector. He busted many smuggling attempts during his tenure, besides detecting numerous cases of tax evasion due to which the national exchequer faced huge losses.
Here at the capacity-building session in Lahore, Director Tausif trained the officers in detecting cases of tax evasion and also informed them about his two major achievements during his stay at the Sambrial Customs House.
He also shared a case of fake rebate claims allegedly by M/s Popular Industries on the basis of inflated value. In this case, the average rebate payment per month was Rs 0.29 million and later it rose to Rs 2.18 million on declared value. The declared value by the company was accepted by the then collector under Section 25 A of the Customs Act, 1969 read with Sub-Section 15 of Section 25 on different grounds that 100 percent exports were being made on order of specific demand with given specification, design, etc to the Wal-Mart, a top retailer business in USA. None of the goods were exported to any law-tariff countries like UAE, Saudi Arabia or any African state and the basic input i.e. aluminium alloy metal’s price had almost doubled from 2003 in five years in the international market. The link to increase in international prices of aluminium was only relevant when input material was duty paid. But in this case, input material was not duty paid at all.
Later, the board suspended the order of the collector and referred matter to the Directorate General of Valuation. The DG Valuation declared the value as inflated and determined the rebate at Rs 220 per kilogramme.
The IOCO director also presented another case of duty/taxes evasion allegedly by M/s Duty Free Shops (DFS), Sambrial, which was detected by him after assuming charge at the Sambrial Customs as an additional collector. “After assuming charge on May 29, 2009, I observed gross irregularities and serious malpractice in the working of the DFS.”
He further explained that the sale of goods was being made at the level of commercial quantities by preparing forged invoices using the copies of passports of passengers, which were collected deceitfully.
In passenger verification exercise, 100 percent of the sample selected by the officials disowned making any purchases as well as signing the invoices, he further informed.
The fake invoices were stereotype and uniform showing similar and identical quantity and description. For instance, 75 pieces of ABS suit cases, 2,400 mobile batteries, 1,600 tins of cold drinks, 1,500 pistol toys, 4,260 friction cars and 2,200 safety razors were given to one single passenger in blatant violation of all rules and regulations. Thousands of passengers each were given said commercial quantity in total violation of Rule 15 (a) of Baggage Rules under SRO 666 (I)/2006. This commercial quantity to every single passenger proves a planned mega tax scam committed in the guise of passengers duty free allowance.
He added that the FBR on the request of the then Customs-North chief collector directed the Post Clearance Audit, Lahore, to conduct a thorough audit of M/s Duty Free Shops for the year 2006-07, 2007-08 and 2008-09. The PCA after auditing found Rs 349 million duty/taxes evasion allegedly by the accused company and the case was sent to the Customs Adjudication, Lahore.
The competent authority heard the case and adjudged Rs 349 million duty/taxes evasion against the respondent and imposed a fine of Rs 238 million on the company.
