Largest seizure by Customs exposes transshipment permit weaknesses

KARACHI: The misuse of safe transportation under Transshipment Permit (TP) has been exposed with the seizure of a big haul of electronic items by Model Customs Collectorate (MCC) Preventive.
Zahid Khokhar, Chief Collector South (Enforcement) at a press conference on Wednesday disclosed the seizure, which he claimed as the largest seizure in Pakistan Customs history.
Sharing the details of the seizure he said that the anti-smuggling organisation of Customs Preventive raided a warehouse in SITE, Karachi and recovered electronic goods worth Rs304.6 million. He said that the goods were transported under the TP to Lahore Dry Port, but the culprits offloaded the containers at a local warehouse to replace the high-duty value goods with lower-values to evade duty and taxes.
The seized goods included around 28,000 mobile phones, LED TVs, auto parts, and contact lenses of European origin.
The chief collector admitted flaws in the safe transportation under transshipment and replied to a query that tracking system as implemented for Afghan Transit Trade would be available for TP consignments.
At present the imported goods meant for transshipment were not assessed or examined at the port of entry and the entire exercise, including collection of duty and taxes were done and collected at the port of destination. In the past, many incidents have been reported by Preventive Collectorate and Anti-Smuggling of Customs Intelligence where the facility of transshipment was grossly misused. Since the customs collectorates at port of entry were not allowed to examine the TP goods, therefore, there was an option to intercept the containers only on authentic reports. During the past two years, the filing of consignments for TP clearance has grown phenomenally because of enhanced vigilance on Afghan Transit Trade. The culprits diverted the smuggled goods through TP consignments.
There were reports that the unscrupulous persons have the ability to jam the trackers, break the seals and replace the same as original. Therefore, in such a scenario, to detect the misuse of TP was difficult. Zahid Khokhar said that he would send suggestions to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for changing the procedure to file TP consignments. “There should be goods declaration (GD) at the port of entry through the FBR’s online system,” Khokhar said.
At present, the goods declaration under TP was being filed at dry ports, and en-route, from port of entry to port of destination, no one knows what the container was carrying.
The chief collector said that in this incident, the bonded carrier had been arrested as he was responsible for safe transportation.
He said that three other people had been arrested in this connection as well.
On the occasion, Tariq Huda, Collector, MCC Preventive said that the collectorate was operating with a small human workforce. He said that the FBR was increasing the workforce and giving speed boats to customs for monitoring in Pakistani waters.
He said that during the past couple of months, the collectorate had intercepted three cases, where goods were being pilfered from transshipment cargo destined for upcountry.