PESHAWAR: Collectorate of Customs Appraisement Peshawar has registered an FIR against several importers and Customs agents involved in mis-declaring the weight of the imported goods. Approximate amount of revenue loss at this initial stage has come out to the tune of Rs9.14 million.
As per sources, information was received through Chief Collector North Muhammad Saleem to Collector of Customs Appraisement Peshawar Muhammad Shfaq Khan that some Customs Clearing Agents have cleared their perishable consignments on lesser weight rather than their actual weights by misusing/forging NLC issued weighment slips to evade payment of leviable duty and taxes.
FIR is registered against M/s Mosam Shinwari Traders, M/s Qadeem Enterprises, M/s Rayan Afghan Customs Agency, M/s Z&S Traders, M/s Sudais Enterprises, M/s Ahmed & Sons, M/s Ali Customs Clearing Agency and others.
After receiving the information, a team was formed under the supervision of Additional Collector Customs Muhammad Rizwan to investigate the matter.
During initial investigation for the period from 01.06.2023 to 08.08.2023, around 203 weight slip entries in manual register of Customs Enforcement at gate-in pertaining to the consignments cleared by the Clearing Agents mentioned above did not match with that of their respective GDs in Web Based One Customs (WeBOC) as their slips were showing lesser weight than that of the weights mentioned in the manual register.
Meanwhile the team found eight original weighment slips showing exact weight and other particulars as mentioned in the manual register. The above Clearing Agents instead of mentioning the original weight used the tampered weighment slips and mentioned lesser weight against their respective GDs in WeBOC to get unfair advantage by evading payment of leviable duty and taxes.
The recovery of original weighment slips has substantiated the tempering/forgery in Weighment slips uploaded/used by the agents in their consignments.
Further investigation is still underway.
