Asim Ahmad, the Chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), recently paid a visit to the Customs Intelligence Headquarters in Islamabad to commend the success of recent anti-smuggling operations.
The operations, which were conducted by the Directorate General of Intelligence & Investigation- Customs in Baluchistan, Rawalpindi / Islamabad, and Karachi, led to the seizure of essential commodities, dry fruits, cigarettes, Indian origin gutka, and shisha flavor worth Rs. 754 million during the last four days of the current week.
These anti-smuggling operations were carried out in response to the directives of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, who has called for a crackdown on the smuggling of essential items from Pakistan to neighboring countries.
Director General of Customs Intelligence, Faiz Ahmad Chadhar, shared credible information with the Directorate of Customs Intelligence in Gwadar about a large quantity of Pakistani origin fertilizer urea and sugar that had been dumped at different premises/godowns in and around Khuzdar City, with the intention of being smuggled from Baluchistan to Afghanistan.
Following these directives, a team was constituted by the Director of Customs Intelligence in Gwadar to carry out an operation to seize the essential items from various dumping sites in the Khuzdar district. On April 29, 2023, the Customs Intelligence team, assisted by Frontier Corps, Kalat Scouts, the district administration, and the police, searched a farm house and recovered 26,407 bags of fertilizer urea and 8,209 bags of sugar. In another raid in the Khuzdar district, 10,630 bags of Pakistani origin urea fertilizer and 3,770 bags of sugar were recovered.
In the third leg of the operation, the joint team reached the Arbab Complex, a local market where shops had been rented for the illegal hoarding of essential items. A thorough search of each shop resulted in the recovery of 22,978 bags of Pakistani origin sugar and 2,646 bags of urea fertilizer from 33 different shops. In addition to these three operations, two more were conducted by Customs Intelligence in Baluchistan in which 2,200 bags of urea fertilizer and 10,000 bags of sugar were seized at Gadani and Noshki.
In total, during the ongoing drive against the smuggling of essential commodities, Customs Intelligence has seized 41,883 bags of urea fertilizer worth Rs. 167.532 million and 44,957 bags of sugar worth Rs. 224.785 million. These operations during the last weekend have successfully thwarted an attempt to smuggle to Afghanistan huge quantities of 86,840 bags of essential commodities with a cumulative worth of Rs. 392.317 million, which is a severe blow to the smuggling mafia.
On another specific information received through the Director General of Customs Intelligence, Faiz Ahmad Chadhar, the combined staff of Directorate of Customs Intelligence Rawalpindi and HQ Islamabad conducted a joint operation at Moosa Godown located at Sharbat Street, Rata Amraal, Rawalpindi on May 2, 2023, and recovered a huge quantity of different smuggled items. These smuggled goods, valued at Rs. 300 million, include high-value items like smuggled almonds, cashew nuts, walnuts, cigarettes, tea, etc.
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