Registration fraud: Govt investigates extent of stamp paper scam

Millions of rupees in registration fees ‘missing’ from govt accounts.

LAHORE: The Board of Revenue (BoR), having discovered that property registrations far exceed the registration fees deposited in the government treasury, has set up a committee to investigate the extent of the fraud, The Express Tribune has learnt.

BoR officials visited several housing societies in Lahore and found irregularities in the stamp paper used to register properties. The Finance Department checked its accounts and found that the value of the stamp papers far exceeded the money collected in registration fees, indicating fraud. Officials said that the ‘missing’ revenue ran to many millions of rupees.

The additional collector for Lahore has set up a three-member committee to examine the accounts and identify exactly how much potential revenue has been lost. The district collectors of Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura and Nankana Sahib have been told to get all stamp papers used in the last year verified by the government treasury.

Paper trail

Earlier, BoR officials visited various housing societies in Lahore to look at registration documents and sent a report to the treasury officer for verification of stamp papers, according to a letter from the Punjab BoR Stamp Wing to the district coordination officer and district collector dated September 15. “The report of the treasury officer indicates that the exact resource and data of the issuance of stamp papers in a number of cases are not traceable,” says the letter.

The Finance Department then decided to scrutinise its accounts for the last three years. Committees were set up to look at “the record of receipts of sub registrars’ offices for the financial years 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11,” according to an order issued by the chief inspector of treasuries at the Finance Department on September 17. The accounts of seven towns have been scrutinised while auditors are examining Ravi Town and Wagha Town records.

The Lahore commissioner also wrote to the district collectors of Kasur, Sheikhupura and Nankana Sahib and told them to check all stamp papers used for the registration of documents over the last year. “The figures of government dues so collected may also be reconciled with the government treasury,” says the letter.

The three-member committee set up by the BoR includes Data Gunj Bakhsh Town sub registrar Mushahid Hussain Kazmi, deputy treasury officer Walayat Ali Shah, and BoR inspector of stamps Sultan Alam, according to an order issued by the additional collector on September 22.

The committee is “to scrutinise the registration fee collected in cash while registering documents at prescribed ratio, to check deposit of cash collected into government treasury under head B01311-Registration, reconciliation carried out by sub-registrars with treasury officer, Lahore, for deposit of fee into government treasury, to work out variation in collection of registration fee, its deposit into government treasury,” says the order.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3^rd, 2011.