FBR body requests report on NATO, ISAF containers

FBR committee requests report on cross-border certificates for supposed Nato and Isaf supplies.

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) committee investigating evasion of customs duties at the country’s land borders has requested a report on cross-border certificates issued at Peshawar and Quetta borders for the transit of containers supposed to be containing Nato and Isaf supplies.

The committee has requested a record of certificates issued between January 2008 and June this year.

An FBR official quoted the committee’s preliminary report, saying that reconciliation of cross-border certificates is not enough to track the transported containers.

According to the report, he said, it is necessary to ascertain the legitimacy of certificates by verifying signatures. Only then will it be possible to ascertain the exact number of containers actually reaching their intended destinations in Afghanistan and how many of them “disappeared”, the report said. It called for a record of certificates which have already been issued.

There are 12,000 containers which have supposedly crossed into Afghanistan in the names of the two international organisations.

The FBR has said that there are a few companies that have wrongfully transported containers using Nato and Isaf labels and action is being taken against two such companies and customs officials who facilitated the crime.

The Supreme Court had earlier taken suo motu notice of a report submitted by the directorate-general of customs intelligence and referred the case to the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) and instructed it to submit a report to the apex court within a month.

The directorate general’s report had said that some companies import containers in the manner and these containers “disappear” during transit, and “reappear”  in local markets.

The report alleged that some customs officials are in collusion with these companies and such criminal activities result in losses of billions of rupees to the national exchequer.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14^th, 2010.