By: Imran Khan
KARACHI: MCC Appraisement West has detected the largest smuggled quantity of banned luxury items in the history of Pakistan, worth 450 million
A case has been registered against M/S Green Industries PVT and others while one main suspect has been arrested.
According to the Customs officials involved Company used approval certificate from Sindh Environmental Department which was issued without any due process.
Goods comprising Indian jewelry, high value electronics, Tablet PCs, electronic cigarettes, auto parts and other goods worth over Rs450 million have been seized.
According to details of the case, M/s Riz Green Industries vide GD No. 19880 dated 15-8-2022 imported a consignment comprising 10 containers through clearing agent M/s Shafaay International.
The goods were declared to be scrap/shredded tyres. The consignment was imported from United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Information had already been passed through Collector Appraisement West Tahir Qureshi to Additional Collector Faisal Bukhari, Assistant Collector Salman Javed, Principal Appraiser Nadeem-ur-Rehman, Appraising Officer Naqeeb Ullah regarding attempts of clearing high value goods through mis-declaration.
The GD was processed under yellow channel, and on the instructions of Additional Collector Saad Rabbani and Deputy Collector Raza Naqvi, Assistant Collector Amin Khan marked the consignment for examination.
The examination of consignment found that only one container had scrap/shredded tyres, while rest of the nine containers held high-value and banned goods.
The leviable duty and taxes on the offending goods comes to over Rs400 million.
It is interesting to note that M/s Riz Green Industries had obtained an Approval Certificate from Sindh Environmental Department to import, handle, scrap/shredded tyres at their facility in Hub.
However, on the directives of Deputy Collector R&D Faizan Badar, Muhammad Riaz Appraising Officer R&D visited the premises of M/s Riz Green Industries, but the facility was not found at the given address.
Investigations found that M/s Riz Green Industries filed 42 GDs, of which 34 GDs were sent to examination. It is suspected that by some manipulation, only the container having the actually declared goods was selected by the system for examination, while other containers were not examined.
Sources said that such large quantity of goods are not brought without a firm arrangement with black sheep of Appraisement and staff of PRAL and the investigation has been extended to include them.
