Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on Wednesday remarked that tax recovery is not being made despite court’s orders and the accused are being given a “clean chit.”
He gave these remarks while presiding over a three-member bench of Supreme Court (SC) during the course of hearing of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) containers case.
Additional Prosecutor General National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Rana Zahid appeared on behalf of NAB while Rana Shamim represented FBR in the court.
The court sought details of correspondence between the government and FBR with reference to constitution of tribunals under the custom act.
Additional Prosecutor General NAB Rana Zahid presented ISAF containers report in the court while SC rejected this report.
As per the NAB report, total number of ISAF containers were about 34,078 while FBR report indicated the number of containers as 31,463.
The chief justice remarked, “tax recovery is not being made nor has any action been taken against the culprits so far despite court’s orders. This is matter of billion of rupees of national wealth. We can not shut our eyes. NAB has given clean chit to several people and tremendous loss is being caused to national exchequer. We will not allow national wealth to be plundered and will bring back the looted money to national kitty. No progress has been made in the case despite a lapse of two years. The court should be informed after interval how much recoveries have been made under tax head. What happened about the joint meeting between chairman FBR and others?”
FBR told the court that a meeting was held as per court’s orders and matter of missing containers was discussed at length. It was decided to file references against 7 clearing agents, FBR said. Loss to the tune of Rs 9.98 billion was caused, FBR reported.
FBR further told the court that efforts were made to decide the cases within the period of two months. A meeting was held on September 25, 2012 and it was decided to file the references against the accused persons within 10 days.
The chief justice inquired as to how much amount was recovered. Rana Shamim informed the court that a sum of Rs 5.6 million had been recovered.
CJ remarked it was known to FBR that no stay order could be issued in their matter and even then case was being dragged on by them.
The hearing of the case was adjourned till Friday.
