The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) may transfer Vigilance Unit of Directorate General of Intelligence and Investigation to the headquarters for effective monitoring of tax officials and vigilance of key revenue collection stations.
Sources told Business Recorder on Monday that the issue came to the light during last meeting of the Integrity Management Steering Committee (IMSC). The meeting raised question about the location of the Vigilance Unit, which would be responsible to detect corrupt practices among the tax machinery.
Presently, the Vigilance Unit is located in the office of Director General of Intelligence. It is under consideration of the IMSC that the FBR should also follow the best international practices for the establishment of such kind of specialised department.
One of the proposals is to establish the Vigilance Unit within the purview of Human Resource Management (HRM) or Audit Wings of the FBR, said the sources. It is yet not clear as to why such a proposal is being considered, as the Director General of Intelligence has already established such units in the field formations.
The newly established Vigilance Wing has the mandate to check revenue leakage at key points and keep a bird eye-view on tax officials, involved in corrupt practices.
The Vigilance Wing had become fully operational. The Wing, with headquarters in Islamabad, comprises two full-fledged field vigilance units at Karachi and Lahore. There is a need of financial and logistic support for the Vigilance Wing for carrying out smooth operations. Sources said the vigilance and surveillance operations, covering major revenue centres, required substantial amount in the first year of operations for developing a network at source at vital revenue points. Moreover, funds are also required for purchase of gadgets used in vigilance and surveillance operations.
The Vigilance Wing is a blend of customs, income tax and army officers/officials, whereas utilisation of the existing intelligence and investigation officers would be done at regional offices at Peshawar, Quetta, Faisalabad, Multan, Sukkur and Gujranwala.
The directorate has been engaged in integrity check of all officers/officials of the FBR, preferably BS-11 and above, profiling of officers (BS-16 and above) at Intelligence and Investigation (HQs) Islamabad and profiling of officials (BS 11-15) at regional offices of the directorate.
The integrity check through computerised personal profiling of officers/officials BS-11 and above would be done on an especially devised format. Sources for obtaining information about tax officials included posting/transfer notifications, corruption related complaints received by the department, investigated by Director General of I&I; ground check reports from field Vigilance Units; information from the 'Directorate General of Internal Audit, External Audit (Direct & Indirect Taxes), the FTO, courts and other agencies.
Sources said the Director General of Intelligence would conduct documents-based integrity check of tax officials, which was a complete deviation from hearsay and whimsical assessments. The documents-based integrity check included documents/records/files, which form the basis for documents-based integrity check, mandatory annual declaration of assets, performance evaluation reports (PERs), personal files/records, human resource information system; previous departmental inquiry proceedings record, income tax record and input from other agencies.
The Director General of Intelligence would also conduct cross-matching and data analysis of annual declarations, income tax record details/documents available with other agencies and on ground position of assets in possession of the reported officer. Sources said the continuous vigilance and surveillance on tax officials would be done for verification of declared version of income, assets and expenses, track un-declared/mis-declared assets, ascertain real lifestyle, track Benami transactions and detect ventures and accounts of the tax officials.
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