LAHORE: Customs Preventive Anti-Smuggling Organization (ASO) recovered over Rs 150 million illegally imported tires, cigarettes, dry milk, welding rods, betel nuts, cloths, china salt, ceramics tiles, shisha flavor, cars, and land cruisers in various raids in the city.
Sources told Customs Today that on the directions of Collector Preventive Basit Maqsood Abbasi, the ASO team under the supervision of Assistant Collector Salman Javaid, Assistant Collector Ali Tauqeer initiated crackdowns on the smuggling activities in the city and recovered the non-customs paid items and vehicles with the assistant of Inspector M Ashfaq Hamdani, police and district management.
The customs authorities also confiscated vehicles being used in the illegal transportation of the smuggled goods.
The official sources said that over Rs 5 million vehicles that transported non duty paid items were seized. The customs authorities after registering cases against the responsible have initiated further investigations.
It is said that following the successful crackdowns by the customs ASO team Collector Basit Abbasi and Additional Collector Muhammad Saeed Watto appreciated team instructed them to adopt zero tolerance against every type of smuggling activities.
Earlier last month, the ASO team confiscated smuggled dry milk, China salt and Khopra powder worth Rs50million on the information of Collector Customs Preventive Basit Maqsood Abassi from his sources.
The team recovered 1708 bags of dry milk, 450 bags of China salt and 23 bags khopra powders.
The customs authorities registering FIR have started further investigation into the case.