Regularizing smuggled vehicles: Action against customs officials initiated

Directorate General of Post Clearance Audit of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has initiated disciplinary proceedings against customs officials involved in mismanagement and corruption in regularizing the smuggled vehicles under an Amnesty Scheme in 2013. As per FBR brief on amnesty scheme of motor vehicles prepared for Senate Standing Committee on Finance, a comprehensive inquiry concerning lapses in implementation of amnesty scheme has already been undertaken in the wake of the findings of the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) report and disciplinary proceedings have been initiated accordingly against delinquent officials of customs.
In pursuance of the Federal Tax Ombudsman's directives, the Directorate General of Post Clearance Audit conducted audit/scrutiny of record pertaining to the clearance of vehicles under the Amnesty Scheme 2013 throughout the country. The amount of short levied duty/ taxes detected as a result of the audit has been recovered so far by the collectorates.
Under sub-section 3A of Section 32 of the Customs Act, 1969, notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (3), where any duty, taxes or change has not been levied or has been short levied or has been erroneously refunded and this is discovered as a result of an audit or examination of an importer's accounts or by any means other than an examination of the documents provided by the importer at the time the goods were imported, the person liable to pay any amount on that account shall be served with a notice within five years of the relevant date requiring him to show cause why he should not pay the amount specified in the notice.
In view of this provision, it is pertinent to mention that in the light of sub section 3A of section 32 of the Customs Act, 1969 the time period for recovery of the short levied amount is five years and if the said short levied amount is not recovered, it may lead to audit paras/ objections.
As regards action against the officers of customs is concerned, it is apposite to mention that as per law, no concession beyond that legally available under the said amnesty scheme was extended on the smuggled vehicles regularized under the Scheme 2013. The recovery notices are in fact for short levied amounts resulting from calculation errors which crept in due to sheer workload during one month (March-April 2013) concurrency of the Amnesty scheme. During the said month, a total of 17,714 vehicles were regularized under the scheme by the Quetta Collectorate, which stretched the available human resource to the limit. Even then the post clearance audit of said vehicles has indicted short levy in only 2859 (16%) of vehicles out of the total vehicles regularized under Amnesty-2013, by the Collectorate. In any case, a comprehensive inquiry concerning lapses in implementation of amnesty scheme has already been undertaken in wake of the findings of the FTO's report on the subject and disciplinary proceedings have been initiated accordingly against delinquent officials of customs, the FBR added.