Missing Containers scam , Afghan Transit trade misused , 50 billion revenue lost , chairman FBR

 FBR Chairman Salman Siddique informed the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Monday that duty and tax evasion on 23,882 commercial Afghan transit containers  but went missing from January 2008 to June last year caused a revenue loss of  about Rs50 billion.

In a written statement submitted to SC, he said a reconciliation exercise for commercial containers was being made exact and the number of missing containers might increase by about 500.

The court was earlier informed by the FBR that the details of 3,688 containers had not been found in the record of the Afghan Wakil Tijar and another 3,142 containers had not been received at Chaman.

Show cause notices for 6,830 Chaman-bound containers have been issued for the recovery of Rs13 billion duties .

Salman Siddique said that after concluding the exercise for Chaman-bound containers, complete record of about 108,000 cross-border certificates of Peshawar customs had been obtained from the federal tax ombudsman.

He said duplicate copies of the certificates were retained after the containers crossed the Torkham border under customs escort.

It was found that 17,052 containers which  left Karachi for Torkham had not reached the destination and had been  smuggled inside Pakistan instead.

He said orders had been given to customs authorities in Karachi to initiate proceedings.

The non-commercial transit cargo imported by the Afghan govt and Nato/Isaf and non-commercial imports by American military is also being reconciled and information about cargo cleared between January 2007 and December last year is being analysed now.