KARACHI: Serious violations of rules and regulations on the part of the concerned field formation of FBR and NLC with the connivance of senior management resulted in the multi-billion rupees ISAF containers scam, interim report of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) said.
According to the report, the inquiry committee of FBR admitted that there were serious violations of rules and regulations, omissions and commissions on the part of the concerned field formation of FBR as well NLC with the negligence, inefficiency and voluntary blindness by the senior management.
Although the NLC was asked through various communications to provide data in order to support the proceedings, the same was not yet received, the report said. Flaws in the working of Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) to determine the exact number of Goods Declarations (GDs) at customs station, Amangarh near Peshawar had firstly set the stage for this scam, the report said.
The goods, which were received partially or in full at customs station, Amangarh, near Peshawar were acknowledged in full. For example, if five out of twenty containers of GDs were received at the said station, the PRAL system would report all 20 GDs at the same time.
Therefore, the customs officers, who de-sealed the containers in system, were taking advantage of this defective system and could also de-seal the containers which may never have reached the destination. However, no corrective measures were taken by PRAL to enhance the monitoring control of the system, the report said.
Consequently, there were 3216 containers in the record of the terminal operators where date of de-sealing of the container in the system was one day before or even later than the completion of round trip of the containers, which was practically impossible for a container to be de-sealed after the completion of round trip or to complete it in a day or less than a day after de-sealing at the border customs station.
Therefore, there was no doubt that this phenomenon supported containers' non-receipt at the destination and might have been de-sealed only in the record, the report said. Besides that a subsidiary of FBR, PRAL had also proved to be deficient to induct supportive module in the system, which allows the users to alter their entries. Resultantly, the details of bills of lading remained in place in computer data, irrespective of the changes.
The report said Form-A having seal numbers, is sent to the first destination and captured in the system (PRAL) but there is no provision for taking fresh seal numbers in the system. The 'stand alone' systems of PRAL were not integrated and accordingly the customs staff was not in a position to capture the whole trail in the system, though records were maintained on paper. The system and the records were neither promptly and properly in place nor audited.
In spite of allowing the use of Hired Mechanical Transport (HMT) only on one-time basis by the board, the same continued unabated. Keeping this in view, it is strongly believed that the use of HMT without the backing of any bank guarantee and effective monitoring system could have been a major source of possible pilferage of transit goods.
The report said the de-stuffing and cross-stuffing of cargo from the original containers was allowed but many containers were moved from the designated port area to the adjoining port area and were illegally de-stuffed.
Similarly, in some cases, the de-stuffed cargo, which was kept in the sheds of adjoining port area, were not taken out in the original containers but shown to be in the original containers at the destination. On the other hand, the goods, which were de-stuffed from containers within the port premises, were neither recorded nor the details of the system mentioned in the GDs.
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