Duty-Free Shops in Karachi have also been found involved in misusing ''passports arrival record'' of international passengers as they are making huge amount of bank transactions in the open market.
Sources told Business Recorder here on Saturday that the Directorate General of Post-Clearance Audit (PCA) Karachi has gathered fresh evidence against such shops, exposing unique techniques to manipulate data of incoming passengers. The directorate has unearthed huge amount of evasion of duties and taxes while conducting updated audit exercise.
After thorough scrutiny of the record, the directorate has submitted latest report to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), showing that the number of missing containers imported by these shops and subsequently sold in the open market have now reached 76. Further investigation of the case during December has exposed modus operandi of such shops to evade the authorities.
The DG PCA has detected serious discrepancies in the ''passports arrival record'' of international passengers. The purchases shown in the record showed that these pertained to international passengers who have not yet arrived. Strangely, the invoices of purchases belong to those international passengers who have no knowledge about the misuse of their passport record. The passengers have to make purchases within 60 days of arrival in Pakistan. In certain cases, purchase invoices belong to passengers who arrived one year ago.
According to the report, audit of import record and available bonded warehouse record of Duty-Free Shops shows that there are 69 missing consignments (76) containers of miscellaneous merchandise imported by such shops during June-November 2009. These 76 containers were not received in the customs bonded warehouse of the Model Customs Collectorate (MCC) Preventive Karachi. The amount of evaded duties and taxes worked out on the missing consignments has gone up from Rs 100 million to Rs 255 million.
Moreover, during the audit of sales record of past three years of Duty-Free Shops, huge bank transactions with market customers were also unearthed. The random verification of passports arrival record of passengers to whom invoices were issued also showed serious discrepancies. In a number of cases the passangers did not arrive at all or their arrival was much before the date of invoice and the goods were sold in violation of Baggage Rules 2006, the report stated.
The DG PCA has also received a complaint through the FBR that the duty-free shops at Karachi have been involved in illegal sale of bicycles, which is also being probed and findings would be submitted in the final audit report to the board, the report added.
It is worth mentioning that last month an audit team of the directorate had conducted audit of Duty-Free Shops Karachi for the last three years. During the audit of relevant records the audit team unearthed parallel sales record/bank statements showing sale of duty-free goods to market traders instead of bona fide passengers in violation of Chapter X of CGO No 12/2002. Moreover, the audit/stock taking of warehouse of Duty-Free Shops has shown that a large number of consignments imported by them were never brought to bonded warehouse and sold directly in the local market. The Duty-Free Shops filed a petition in the Sindh High Court against the audit conducted by the directorate. However, on proper and effective defence by the officers of DG PCA Karachi the court in its interim order/directed the petitioner to provide the relevant record to audit team for audit as per law.
Consequent to the audit, one missing consignment of cigarettes valuing Rs 50 million has been surrendered by the Duty-Free Shop and the same has been seized by MCC Customs (Preventive). The audit/contravention report in the case is being finalised, sources added.
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