Customs officials of United Arab Emirates (UAE) have confirmed fake exports made by Bawan Shah Group of Companies through 30-35 containers mis-declared goods.
The outgoing Director-General Intelligence and Investigation Customs and Excise Major General Usman Ali Shah told Business Recorder on Saturday that the customs department of Saudi Arabia had also confirmed fake exports. One of the African countries is also actively interacting with the directorate to submit information about the containers offloaded there.
He said that requests were lodged with commercial counsellors for confirmation of contents of 184 consignments shipped by the said Group to UAE, Iran, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Uganda and Niger. The commercial counsellors of Pakistan in South Africa, Sudan, Niger, Saudi Arabia and Iran were also sent the details of containers shipped by the group during July 2005 to March 2006. The Commercial Counsellors have been requested to supply certified customs documents from the concerned customs officials to ascertain the extent/quantum of mis-declaration. The audit/investigation would be finalised after verification by officials of these countries.
Usman said that the special investigating audit team at Karachi had obtained some important data pertaining to the case. The team was sent to Karachi to conduct a thorough scrutiny of tax records for ascertaining the amount of sales tax refund fraudulently obtained by the group. He said that the directorate was also conducting investigation to collect information about the suppliers scattered all over the country. Tracing them is a gigantic task.
He said that the special audit team included intelligence officials, who conducted the investigative audit of Sheikh Nooruddin and Sons and successfully established the fraudulent sales tax refund from Lahore. The team comprising young intelligence officials has been attached with the DG, Intelligence Karachi office till completion of sales tax audit.
The team had given excellent performance in case of Sheikh case and it is also doing well in case of current investigation. He said that there was no delay in the investigation of the case, as information collection is a time consuming process.
It is important to mention that the directorate has identified a team of investigating officials, who are expert in the procedure of sales tax refund and have full command of computers programmes to quickly retrieve the relevant information from the STARR and PRAL computers for carrying out audit of ''refund sanction files''.
The Directorate had informed the CBR that the investigation, covering almost 50 percent fraudulent exports under the Duty and Tax Remission for Export (DTRE) scheme, had been completed so far. Documents relating to about 50 consignments confirming the fraud have also been obtained. The multi-million GST scam was unearthed during the tenure of Usman Ali Shah, who has been replaced with the new director-general from army.
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