Senate panel seeks details of all tax cases against fertiliser firm

Move comes after a tax officer concealed Rs92b worth of sales of the company

ISLAMABAD: A Senate panel on Thursday directed the government to provide details of all pending tax cases of Fatima Enterprises Limited after disclosure that a tax officer allegedly facilitated the concealment of Rs92 billion worth of sales of the company.

The Senate Sub-committee on Finance and Revenue, which is investigating cases of corrupt taxmen who are serving at lucrative posts despite facing inquiries, also decided to expand the scope of its probe to the four-and-a-half-year tenure of the PML-N government.

It agreed to review a report that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) had submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office about corrupt FBR officials.

PM Secretary Fawad Hasan Fawad had taken exception to the growing corruption in the FBR. However, it seems that political considerations are hampering the move to remove the corrupt officers.



Asif Rasool, Commissioner Appeals Multan and Bahawalpur tax zones, allegedly “compromised assessments for tax years 2008 to 2011 in the case of Fatima Enterprises Limited by illegally accepting irreconcilable bank credits worth Rs92 billion”, according to the revised report that the FBR submitted in the Senate Subcommittee on Finance. The report stated that “the amount was alleged to be the concealed sale proceeds” of Fatima Fertilizer and Asif Rasool finalised the assessment despite “clear and glaring discrepancies”.

The subcommittee, headed by Senator Mohsin Aziz of the PTI, was shocked to know that an inquiry against the officer was still pending despite a lapse of many years and the officer was serving at a lucrative post.

A high official in the FBR was allegedly protecting Asif Rasool for the past many years, officials in the FBR told The Express Tribune.

“The Rs92-billion case speaks volumes about the FBR efficiency and tells us how the Inland Revenue Department is run,” said Senator Saud Majeed of the PML-N.

The subcommittee asked the FBR to provide all details of the cases of Fatima Fertilizer after it came to know about another case of a loss of Rs1.2 billion to the exchequer due to allegedly illegal tax benefits given to Pak-Arab Fertilizer Limited and Fatima Fertilizer Limited, according to the FBR report.

The FBR has submitted details of 200 cases in the subcommittee. It took action only in half of the cases and even in those cases officers were given minor punishments except for six cases where officers were recommended to be dismissed from service.



The FBR’s chief management tried to defend the delay in finalising the Rs92-billion case inquiry, saying it was a complicated case. But the subcommittee did not accept the answer as more than five years had passed.

Majeed said there were no reasons for delaying the inquiry, as the matter was not pending before any court of law.

The Senate Standing Committee on Finance had set up the subcommittee to unearth cases of officers who were facing inquiries as of November 2015 under the Efficiency and Disciplinary Rules 1973. A recent report of the World Bank claimed that Pakistan suffers a loss of Rs3.2 trillion annually due to weak administration and non-compliant taxpayers. FBR’s Member Administration Tasneem Rehman could not cite a single case where the FBR recovered the plundered money from the corrupt officers.

“It is news for me that recovery from not even a single officer has been made,” said Senator Aziz.

The FBR’s member administration insisted that it was very difficult to prove corruption and bribes during investigations. The subcommittee also inquired about Ansar Majeed against whom the charge of taking bribery of Rs2 million was proved. The FBR informed the committee that a new inquiry had been launched on orders of the Federal Shariat Court.

The subcommittee also took exception to the case of Abdul Majeed Abro who issued bogus refunds of Rs172.1 million, but the FBR imposed only minor penalty of stoppage of two increments that runs into a few thousand rupees.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2017.

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