A NEWS REPORT in an English daily on Friday said a total of 476 factories have just disappeared after enjoying duty-free facility of over Tk 726 crore in import of raw materials under bonded warehouse system showing big loopholes in the system. The report quoting a survey finding of the Customs Bond Commissionerate (CBC) said the tax evaders include 348 factories in the apparel sector and the rest were listed in plastic, packaging and garment accessories. The list was published on Monday after National Board of Revenue (NBR) conducted physical inspection of all export-oriented factories enjoying bonded warehouse facility provided by the government. The report said CBC has already suspended the import-export activities of those companies and asked all customs houses to stop it in their names as well. The NBR is also working to recover the money from the companies which used the cover of the fake bonded warehouse facilities for cheating, the report said. The report as we see is suggestive of very high financial crimes under the cover of fake import orders in which parties have transferred money out of the country. They have in fact used the cover of the import bills apparently under high invoicing to move out the highest amount of fund using from the country. Since the importers were exempted from making physical payment of the import duty in question under the bonded warehouse facility, they have laundered the highest possible amount of money and then removed the nameplates of their business firms to become untraceable. So the customs officials did not find their presence any more. We however don’t know the exact amount of money laundered from the country under this particular import scandal. But question arises as to why routine customs verifications don’t take place when the government is offering such huge bonded warehouse facility to parties involving big import orders. There is every possibility that a section of dishonest customs officials were involved in the cheating, otherwise such huge number of factories could not have made way to safe tax evasion. We believe, here the bigger problem is that our financial crime prevention system is always post-facto rather pro-active and business houses having influence at political level of the government are in the forefront of such cheating. We must say our customs and revenue administration and specially, the anti-laundering system must be more watchful and apply customs rules in unbiased way to business parties having influence in political quarters. It may go a long way to protect the vital financial interest of the nation.
