Excise department officials booked over scam

Corruption inquiry points to dubious auction, registration of vehicles

LAHORE:

The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) has registered a case against as many as 18 officers, including five directors, of the Punjab Excise, Taxation and Narcotics Control Department suspected of being involved in a vehicle auction scam.

An ACE team has arrested Excise and Taxation Officer (ETO) Adeel Amjad, while raids are being carried to arrest the remaining officers involved in the scam of billions of rupees.

The officials facing the case reportedly include Excise Director Rizwan Akram, Muhammad Asif, Sohail Ashraf, Qamarul Hassan and Imran Aslam.

The mega scandal of the registration of used, smuggled and stolen vehicles, mainly trucks and buses, on the basis of fake auction vouchers for several years by a gang of officials of the department and other persons was unearthed during investigations by the provincial anti-graft watchdog.

During the investigations, the ACE sought verification of thousands of vehicles registered during last few years.

The excise department stated in its reply that it could not trace scanned record of as many as 4,397 vehicles registered between 2015 and 2018.

A startling revelation was made during the investigations that at least 1,290 vehicles were registered in the name of Qaiser Abbas, an employee of the prime accused in the case, Khuram Gujjar. Another 996 vehicles were registered against the name of a stamp seller, Ali Arzi Shah. Both the men reportedly expressed ignorance about the registration. Other suspected front men in the case include Talal Tayyab and Adil Butt.

The ACE had also approached the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to acquire details about various persons involved in the case.

The anti-corruption department claims that the scandal cost at least Rs300 billion to the national exchequer through loss to motor vehicle industry and evasion of taxes.

The investigations launched in 2017 revealed that registration of as many as 7,013 vehicles was fake, with 4,000 of them being registered on the basis of dubious vouchers, while the record of other vehicles also could not be verified.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30^th, 2020.