Customs puts Benami imports on its radar to curtail money laundering

Directorate of Intelligence and Investigation (DI&I), Customs Karachi has put Benami imports on its radar to curtail one of the major sources of money laundering. Talking to Business Recorder, Director Irfan Jawed said that Directorate has started investigating Benami imports where import license of the importers were being used by other persons to import goods in the country.

He said that this was information based exercise and the Directorate in order to confirm the veracity of the information asked the importer, whose license was used for the imports, to provide bank and other relevant details to authenticate it as legitimate imports. This issue was highlighted by Chairman All Pakistan Customs Agents Association (APCAA) in its meeting with Irfan Jawed at his office the other day.

Chairman APCAA Arshad Jamal during the meeting stressed upon the registration of (Benami) imports as it were providing huge loss to the natural exchequer. He said that only the container numbers are fed in the column of marks and numbers in the Goods Declaration and Bills of Lading after containerisation and suggested that proper marks and numbers, printed or stencilled on the carton containing the units in the containers along with the containers numbers, should be declared in the GD, which he believed could be verifiable evidence to justify the import status of the goods.

Arshad Jamal also urged to rationalise duty and taxes on different imports in order to discourage smuggling, which was presently on its peak, due to high tariffs and added that department could verify it by conducting a study of different items wherein sharp decline of imports was visible but the markets were flooded with the same.

Shams Ahmed Burney also highlighted some legal points regarding the jurisdictions and requested a rational legislation to address the concerned person in criminal cases and Customs Act/Rules. He said that SOP's may be developed for better investigation process and department should give positive response towards the innocents and suggested to adopt advance technology - artificial intelligence to expand its horizon to curb the menace of smuggling.

Later, Irfan suggested that DI&I could conduct research on it to streamline registration of NTN/Sales Tax of a Company/category-wise to monitor their transactions scientifically and forward their reports to FBR in order to rectify the existing registration process before implementation of Pakistan National Single Window which is the future of Pakistan.