Steel firm booked for 'illegally' removing goods from warehouse

ISLAMABAD: The Collectorate of Customs Appraisement, Port Qasim, Karachi has booked a steel company and clearing agent for causing millions of rupees financial loss to the exchequer through removal of goods fraudulently.

A credible information was received in the Collectorate that importer M/s Pakistan Steel Imports Company had illegally removed goods from public bonded warehouse namely Pakistan Steel Imports Company (Warehouse No. 2- 2015) without payment of assessed duties and taxes and other charges as required under section 104 of the Customs Act, 1969.

To confirm the veracity of information, a team comprising of officials of the Collectorate, was constituted to conduct physical verification of all in-bond and ex-bond consignments of the importer present in the said warehouse.

The nominated inspection team visited premises of the warehouse on October 21, 22, 28, 29, and November 02, 05, 08, & 09, 2021.

During these visits, the team conducted verification of the present goods and obtained original stock register from the manager of the bonded warehouse under proper Musheernama. Initially, a list comprising of 50 in-bond GDs was handed over to the manager of the bond.

He was directed to physically show/verify details of goods and corresponding quantities physically present and/or ex-bonded/removed from the warehouse.

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The manager provided copies of some documents against which deliveries were allowed by him and a GD wise list showing balance and removed quantities of goods on October 28, 2021 which may be treated as integral part of the FIR. Later, another list comprising of 29 in-bond GDs was also given to the manager for confirmation physically.

In his written reply of November 8, 2021 which is also integral part of FIR, the manager confirmed that all the goods in-bonded 29 GDs were removed by the importer/clearing agent.

The manager further revealed that another 8 ex-Bond GDs were provided to him on November 02, 2021 and November 05, 2021 against which goods have also been delivered even though, as per WeBOC record, these GDs were still under processing by the Customs.

According to PMBQ, record provided by the manager and retrieved from the Bond's register was compared with the data obtained from M/s PRAL & WeBOC system. Preliminary investigations revealed that M/s Pakistan Steel Company imported 66 consignments of iron & steel coils/sheets containing GP/CR (alloy/non-alloy) that were in-bonded in the warehouse during different time periods and against which goods were taken out illegally, without payment of assessed duties/taxes and other charges as required under sections 83 and 104 of the Customs Act 1969.

Perusal of WeBOC data indicates that the importer adopted following modus operandi for the fraudulent and illegal removal of goods from warehouse: (i) ex-bond goods declaration were filed for removal of goods from the warehouse but the goods were illegally removed without waiting for completion of assessment under section 80 or 81 of the Customs Act 1969 as required under section 104; and (ii) ex-bond goods declarations were filed for removal of goods from the warehouse which were assessed by customs but the importer, without payment of assessed duties/taxes, illegally removed the goods, thereby violating provisions of sections 83, 97, 104 & 116 of the Act.

The FIRs says that the importer, who is also the owner of the bonded warehouse, with the active connivance of his clearing agent, got the goods fraudulently and illegally removed from the bonded warehouse without customs clearance and without payment of assessed duties/taxes and other charges as required under the law.

These ex-Bond Goods Declarations were neither out of customs charge under section 83(1) nor cleared on assessed duties/taxes as required under section 104 of the Customs Act, 1969 which indicates that these were illegally removed with criminal intent of casing huge loss to national exchequer.

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On the basis of scrutiny/physical verification of the imported goods lying at the public Bonded Warehouse and statements of the warehouse manager, PMBQ has established that Tariq Chobdar, Proprietor of Pakistan Steel Imports Company, Clifton Karachi, who is also sole proprietor of Public Bonded Warehouse "Pakistan Steel Import Company" and Yasir Anjum (Clearing Agent) of M/s Yasir Enterprises illegally removed the goods from the bonded warehouse without payment of assessed duties/taxes and other charges as required under section 104 of the Customs Act, 1969 and without having the goods declarations out of customs charge as required under section 83(1).

As per the statement of manager of the bond, the clearing agent M/s Yasir Enterprises used to manually provide him the copies of payment challans of upfront duty and taxes (paid as per his self-assessed declaration and not as per requirements of section 104) with or without un-cleared GDs copies, and goods were illegally removed on the basis of these documents which were not relevant under the law.

The fraudulent actions of the importer M/s Pakistan Steel Import Company and clearing agent M/s Yasir Enterprises have caused huge loss to the public exchequer amounting to Rs. 163.118 million and constitute contravention of the provisions of Section 32(A), 80, 81, 83(1) 97, 104, 116, and 192 of the Customs Act, 1969 read with Chapter-XV and sub-chapter VI of Chapter XXI of SRO 450(I)/2001, punishable under clauses 1, 14A, 59, 62, and 86 of section 156(I) of the Customs Act, 1969 read with Section 3, 6 & 33 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990 and Section 148 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.

An FIR is lodged, accordingly, and all out efforts are being made to apprehend the culprits.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021