The Directorate-General, Intelligence and Investigation, Customs and Excise, has conducted detailed investigation of 6,000 import containers cleared from Karachi, confirming that only 100-150 containers were found missing during transhipment process, the evident reason being evasion of duties and taxes.
Sources told Business Recorder on Wednesday that the directorate had 'informally' shared preliminary findings of the investigation on missing containers. The initial verification and reconciliation of containers' data confirmed that out of 6000 imported containers, total 100 to 150 containers were missing during transhipment process. The DG Intelligence said that he had physically verified the month-wise data of goods cleared from Pakistan Customs Computerised System (PACCS) till February 2007.
The port-wise container numbers had also been matched with the transhipment data. It was a huge exercise, which was started in February 2006.
It had been discovered that there was no clue of any major tax fraud committed during clearance of 6000 containers from Karachi. The agency did not find any abnormality in the reconciliation of goods declaration data during this period.
According to the interim report, the focus of investigation was to track down the missing containers. Even if the number of missing containers was very small, the whereabouts of these consignments would be traced. Apparently, the containers are untraceable to evade duties and taxes at the import stage. However, every effort would be made to track these containers.
Sources said that the investigation would further examine the aspect of tax fraud committed by the importers of these missing containers. If the intelligence agency found any clue of fraud, it would strictly deal it under the customs laws.
Sources said that the intelligence directorate has yet to submit the final report on clearance of all imported consignments during last 2-3 years. So far, only preliminary investigation of a limited period has been conducted by the directorate. A large period of 2-3 years has to be investigated, which is still undiscovered by the directorate. For this purpose, more information is needed to reconcile containers' database.
Sources said that the reconciliation data of imported consignments has not shown any abnormality. The port-wise data has been thoroughly examined, showing that there was no such thing like thousands of missing containers.
The data analysis has tried to confirm transhipment of containers from Karachi to Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar etc with the help of Goods Declarations (GD) filed by the importers. If these containers were transhipped to other cities, the consignments have to be released against the documents like GDs, which needs verification. The intelligence directorate has also verified the transhipment data from the relevant collectorates of customs.
Sources said that technically when a container is received from Karachi by a particular dry port of Lahore/Rawalpindi etc, it is the responsibility of customs officials to acknowledge the receipt of the container. However, this information is not fed into the system. Legally, there was no compulsion to do so due to absence of procedure. Now the system has been upgraded and it has been made mandatory for the customs to feed container information in their respective system. Otherwise, the container would not be released from the regional dry port, sources added.
It is important to mention that the DG Intelligence had been given access to the 'alter data monitor' to regularly check the movement of containers vis-à-vis data.