Confiscated vehicles by Customs being doled out

ISLAMABAD: Hundreds of tempered vehicles confiscated by Customs authorities have become major sources of alleged corruption and many such expansive vehicles are being doled out among influential people at throwaway prices of just Rs1,000 in some cases because no internal or external audits were done to review stocktaking position, it is learnt.

On the directives of the Supreme Court (SC), the FBR and Customs department had prepared lists of expansive vehicles which were doled out to individuals or departments a few months back. The list was prepared from all over the country but nothing substantial had come out of it so far. “At least four expansive vehicles have been currently standing at houses of a former FBR chairman, one retired member FBR and one existing member of the FBR. One expansive vehicle Cygnus model having market value of Rs25 million has been standing at house of one former FBR chairman even after his retirement from the service but he never bothered to return back vehicle to the department,” official sources confirmed to The News here on Sunday.

There are two categories of vehicles confiscated by the FBR’s Customs department. Smuggled and non-duty-paid vehicles and tempered vehicles are seized by the Customs authorities. In the first category, these smuggled cars are being auctioned by the FBR but in the second category, the FBR took only token money for handing over these vehicles to government departments under rules and procedures.

The sources said that the exact number of tempered vehicles would be standing at 1000 because there is no stocktaking done. However, the Customs authorities claim that total number of such vehicles stands at 232 vehicles in allover Pakistan which the Customs department had confiscated in last five years period. The lower staff of Customs steal different equipment from these tempered vehicles and it is commonly known phenomena.

Official documents available with The News showed that Model Customs Collectorate (MCC) Faisalabad had seized 286 vehicles in two fiscal years in 2013-14 and 2014-15 having total value of Rs332 million. The list of 108 confiscated vehicles during July-June 2014-15 showed that the price of Toyota Land Cruiser ZX V8 model 2014 stood at Rs17 million, Toyota Land Cruiser model 2012 Rs14 million, Toyota Vitz Car model 2007 Rs1.125 million and Toyota Corolla Car Model 2007 Rs0.800 million. The lower price range in these 108 confiscated vehicles was standing at Rs0.492 million for Mazda Mini Truck for model 1989, Rs0.438 million for Toyota Hiace Van model 1988, Rs0.560 million for Toyota Corolla Car model 1993 and Rs0.700 million for Honda car model 2000.

In Islamabad Model Customs Collectorate (MCC), the token price of tempered vehicle was revised upward from Rs1000 to Rs100,000. The placed form carries certain directives were given to those department which used to obtain these vehicles from the FBR.

“There is need to further revise this prices several hundred times along with open bidding among the public sector departments because currently it’s being used to favour friends and acquaintances,” said the official sources.

There are culprits within the ranks of the FBR but there are some honest officers as well, Mohammad Saleem, former DG Automation, being one of them, who got retired on December 2017. The first thing he did on last day of his service was that he returned back his official car to the department. Such honest officers need to be appreciated.

There is growing practice within the ranks of the FBR that when someone was reminded of returning back official vehicles, he or she became upset and started threatening. The FBR has recently informed the Senate Standing Committee on Finance that total confiscated vehicles were 3363 from 2014-15 to date as they seized 1026 vehicles at Peshawar, 2150 at Quetta, 187 at Karachi and 449 from others. They claimed that they were conducting auction of seized goods and vehicles every month. But they never told parliamentarians about tempered vehicles which were not auctioned by the FBR.

The News contacted FBR spokesman Dr Iqbal, who advised this correspondent to contact member Customs for seeking his reply. When visited his office, it was told that he had gone to Lahore.

FBR Member Customs Zahid Kokhar on telephone said that on directives of Supreme Court, they abandoned auctioning of tempered vehicles in 2004 because these chassis numbers were used for many other vehicles. He said that there were only 232 such vehicles which were confiscated by the FBR in last five years.

He said that the Customs department used these vehicles because they had not purchased cars for undertaking field assignments for several years. When his attention was drawn towards misuse of such vehicles, he said that they would take action against it.