ISLAMABAD: The Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO), Shoaib Suddle, will present before the Supreme Court heaps of invoices which do not contain signatures of Customs officials at three important Afghan check posts, confirming that these officials connived in the massive missing containers scam.
Suddle, while confirming the presence of numerous “blank” invoices (ATTIs) told The News: “My case is already established. I do not need to go for applying many techniques to prove it before the Supreme Court.”
The SC is hearing a suo motu case of missing containers. An investigating body is already probing at FBR to find out the actual facts of the scandal and has already put 600 Customs officials on the suspect list in these scams. So far the FBR chief investigator in this scam has concluded neither the names of the suspect importers nor the colluding Customs officials.
The Ombudsman has, however, reported to the FBR chairman that these officials “connived” with the importers to steal thousands of imported consignments. Officials said jeep loads of documents have been arriving in Islamabad from Quetta and Peshawar, which indicates that the case against Pakistan Customs for letting thousands of imported containers may be strong.
The FTO office is currently scanning these documents by digitizing it and the indications are that this office would soon offer the Supreme Court and the FBR evidence of evasion of duties and taxes by Quetta and Peshawar Customs collectors’ offices. The records were last
month demanded by the FTO and countless Afghan Transit Trade Invoices making part of these records reveal that the Customs officials did not acquire signatures of Chaman, Nowshera, Torkham and Afghan Customs officials on these invoices. Absence of these signatures indicates these containers did not cross over to Afghanistan, the destination for which they were meant.
