ISLAMABAD: Another 12 vehicles allegedly belonging to Qatar’s royal family were reportedly recovered by the authorities on Friday from outside and inside of a warehouse in the federal capital.
The capital police on Thursday recovered two vehicles from outside the warehouse located on Kuri Road and handed them over to Customs officials. Later, Customs Intelligence raided the warehouse and recovered another 10 vehicles.
The warehouse was reportedly located in the jurisdiction of Bani Gala police station. The manager of the warehouse claimed that the vehicles belong to Qatar’s royal family.
On Friday, a local news outlet reported that Customs record revealed that at least Rs4.5 billion in import duty on luxury vehicles recovered from the compound was waived from 2012 to 2018 and as many as 330 luxury cars were illegally imported over a period of six years out of which 233 were brought to Pakistan at the behest of Qatar’s royal family. As per details, sixty-one cars were shown in papers under the ownership of Hamad bin Jassim, his son Tamim bin Hamad (72), grandson Faisal bin Hamad (24), and brother Shaikh Falah bin Jassim (101).
On September 25, Customs Intelligence officials confiscated 21 imported luxury vehicles worth Rs250 million from a warehouse belonging to former Senator Saifur Rehman in the outskirts of Islamabad. Officials had said that during the raid, the people present in the warehouse were asked to present the documents of the vehicles but they failed to produce anything, after which the vehicles were confiscated. Qatar Embassy also issued a notification in this regard, stating that the vehicles were legally imported for hunting purposes by the former prime minister of Qatar and had been parked in the warehouses of Rehman in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Reportedly, the vehicles were also used by members of the Sharif family, with one car being in personal use of former premier Nawaz Sharif’s daughter Maryam Nawaz.