Missing Nato containers' scam: NAB begins issuing notices to clearing agents, importers, taxmen

National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Sindh has started issuing 'call up' notices to clearing agents, importers, officials of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and others. Sources said that the action was being taken on the directives of the Supreme Court (SC), which it issued during recent hearing on missing Nato containers case.
During the course of hearing of the case by a three-member bench, headed by chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on February 22, 2013, additional prosecutor general Rana Zahid Mehmood and director general NAB, Sindh Wajid Durrani stated that after receiving the cases, a fresh inquiry was ordered by the bureau, which revealed that a number of containers, containing foreign goods had crossed into Afghanistan and counter-matched forms were made available from the border crossing.
Therefore, the accused persons were not sent up to face trial in accordance with the findings recorded by the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) in his report dated October 1, 2011. On this, the SC had expressed dissatisfaction over NAB's statement, saying that the Bureau had misconstrued the earlier order and had initiated a fresh investigation into the scam instead of moving references against the accused.
The apex court had also directed the NAB to finalise references against the accused, 'instead of sitting over them'. Therefore, the sources said, NAB has started issuing 'call up' notices to clearing agents, importers, FBR officials and others under section 19 read with 27 of National Accountability Ordinance, 1999.
Meanwhile, one of the accused, who did not want to be named, said that they had produced all relevant documents asked by the Bureau during its investigation and the inquiry officer had also expressed satisfaction over it. Now, he added, the same exercise has been reinitiated and the Bureau has issued 'Call up' notice to clearing agents, importers, officials of FBR and others to appear before the investigation team to record their statements.
He further said that the notices were aimed at taking written statements from the accused persons to file references against them in accountability court. He said that some 181 clearing agents had been accused in the case, of them only 20 clearing agents were financially strong to confront NAB's reference in the court. Moreover, he said the NAB in its investigation report confirmed that only 1700 containers were missing while the records of rest of the containers were found during the investigation. Despite repeated attempts DG NAB, Sindh Wajid Durrani was not available on phone for comments.