Liquor smuggling case: FBR suspends 22 officials

Officials suspended for alleged involvement in the Lunar Company liquor smuggling case.

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue Saturday suspended 22 junior officials of the Customs Department in a liquor smuggling case and decided to expand the scope of the investigation to Dubai to plug the origin of the illegal business that has cost millions to the national exchequer.

The officials have been suspended for their alleged involvement in the Lunar Company liquor smuggling case, said Riffat Shaheen Qazi, the FBR spokesperson. She said these people were suspended in the light of an investigation report of the Intelligence Directorate. The Intelligence Wing has recommended sacking these officials. In June 2010, the FBR confiscated a container in Peshwar, carrying liquor disguised as non-alcoholic beverages. The authorities later found out that the Lunar Company had imported 52 such containers of liquor. The FBR had arrested about half a dozen employees of the company at that time. Riffat said the FBR would conduct an inquiry against the suspended employees.

Another board member of the FBR said that the Lunar Company container case has nothing to do with the International Security Assistant Forces (Isaf) containers smuggling case. He said some of the sacked employees have secured pre-arrest bails from the courts and the FBR would try to get their bails cancelled.  The official admitted that the FBR was not pursuing the case vigorously.

“Things have changed with a change of command at the top”, said the official while referring towards recent reshuffling in the FBR management.

There have been allegations that sacking junior official was a cover up designed to protect senior officials, without whose collusion such activity would have been impossible. The FBR board member said that some more developments will take place in the coming days after which the FBR will take action in the Isaf containers case.

In June 2010, media reports claimed that over 11,000 containers had disappeared en-route to Afghanistan. These reports also suggested that the containers were carrying goods for the International Security Assistance Force and Nato troops fighting in Afghanistan. Later, the FBR clarified that only 43 containers had disappeared and admitted that liquor had been smuggled by being misrepresented as regular beverages. The FBR has accepted that forged documents were used to clear containers through Karachi port by using the manual clearance system.

The FBR has suspended several mid-level officials including the Deputy Commissioner of the Regional Tax Office Karachi, the Deputy Collector Karachi, and the Deputy Director Valuation Karachi.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2011.