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| Bangladesh |
| Customs dockets 'destroyed' to conceal revenue theft |
| 2007-07-07 |
| Customs documents involving more than Tk25 crore government revenue have been allegedly destroyed by some customs officials at Burimari land port in Lalmonirhat district to conceal misappropriation of the public money, Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) sources said. The office of assistant commissioner (AC) of the land port has informed the ACC about this misdeed. The government was deprived of the huge amount of revenue due to illegal opening of two Import Manifest Registers (IMRs) without the knowledge of the land port authorities. AC of the land port AKM Mahbubur Rahman, when contacted over telephone, said the ACC and the commissioner of customs, excise and VAT, Rajshahi, were officially informed of the matter on June 19. The two IMRs, opened by Customs Inspector Kamrul Islam and Customs Superintendent Mozaffar Rahman, have been destroyed just to hide the corrupt act, ACC and customs sources said. Following complaints of evading government revenue lodged with the National Board of Revenue (NBR), the customs authorities had launched two probes into the matter. One probe report said the allegations were false. The other probe body has not submitted its report. On the other hand, the Superintendent of Police (SP) of Lalmonirhat had ordered the officer-in-charge (OC) of Patgram Police Station to investigate alleged destruction of customs documents involving over Tk 25 crore, sources said. OC Ashraful Alam however said there were so many complaints about Burimari land port and they submitted their reports accordingly. He could not say anything about this allegation. The customs commissioner denied getting any information about destruction of any documents at Burimari port, and said no such corruption has yet been detected there. Kamrul Islam also denied the allegation against him while Mozaffar Rahman could not be contacted despite repeated attempts. |
| Posted by:Fred |