An official of the customs group, who was hit hard by an ongoing investigation led by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), is trying to get himself inducted into the accountability watchdog, sources familiar with the matter told The Express Tribune on Monday.
Munir Qureshi, member, customs, has already succeeded in deceiving the system by getting himself promoted from BPS-20 to BPS-21 by exploiting legal lacunae, they said.
Qureshi is learnt to be trying to get inducted in the bureau on deputation as the deputy chairman or director-general, NAB, Punjab, or Rawalpindi.
If he succeeds in getting inducted into the NAB, he will not only close down a case pending in NAB headquarters since June 2006, but could also extend undue favours to his cronies, the sources said.
They said that Qureshi had referred a case to NAB while he was posted as collector customs in Quetta, claiming that some officials of his own department had colluded with a clearing and forwarding firm, causing a loss of Rs75 million to the national exchequer on account of tax refunds on export of petroleum products, involving 350 oil tankers to Afghanistan through the Pakistan State Oil (PSO).
Qureshi managed to get 32 customs inspectors posted at the Chaman border post dismissed.
The case was handled by then director of investigation wing-I Brig Iftikhar Mehdi and investigation officer Maj Shabbir of NAB Quetta.
During the course of the investigation, all allegations levelled by Qureshi were found to be baseless, an investigation officer, Irshadul Haq, said.
At the same time, Qureshi wrote three letters to the PSO to award a contract to one of his ‘favourite’ clearing agencies.
According to NAB officials familiar with the investigation, Qureshi had levelled several allegations, including that substandard petrol was being supplied to Isaf/Nato forces in Afghanistan.
Customs officials at the Chaman border post collected 150 samples of the POL from Afghanistan-bound oil tankers, but no sample was referred to the laboratory for analysis. Sources said that they “knew that these samples could not be referred to a laboratory” because it would only counter their allegations.
After these facts were known, the NAB team had referred the case to the NAB headquarters, recommending action against Munir Qureshi on charges of levelling baseless allegations against the PSO and a local clearing agency. The case was referred to the headquarters because only chairman NAB is competent to take action against BPS-20 officers.
Later, Qureshi gave a briefing at the NAB headquarters, in which he accused the NAB officials of “ignoring” some important facts and urged the bureau chief to assign some other officer “of NAB Quetta” to re-investigate the case.
The case was re-investigated by the additional director of the investigation wing–II of NAB, Quetta, Squadron Leader Irshadul Haq, and Inspector Zahid in March 2006.
They came to the same conclusions reached by the previous investigating team, recommending criminal proceedings against Qureshi.
The case is still pending against him since June 28, 2006.
The same official is also said to be involved in the Isaf container case.
Last Wednesday, the Supreme Court summoned several officials of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), Customs and Customs Intelligence, including member, customs, Munir Qureshi, to appear and explain their positions in the huge tax evasion case.
A three-member bench, led by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, is hearing a suo motu case pertaining to 10,000 containers of Isaf which had gone missing from Karachi, as Customs had no record of these containers.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 27th, 2011.
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