March 12, 2002	Tuesday	Zilhaj 27, 1422

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ISLAMABAD, March 11: The Central Board of Revenue, with the assistance of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), has recovered Rs511.74 million from Pakistan International Airlines and other local airlines on account of unpaid taxes and duties.

Through the NAB intervention, an amount of Rs800 million was detected as outstanding against the national airline and some other domestic airlines on account of general sales tax, airport tax and other levies, out of which Rs500 million had been recovered, NAB officials told reporters.

The NAB officials, who did not describe it as corruption but “negligence” primarily on the part of the Central Board of Revenue (CBR), said they intervened on finding drastic reduction in the revenue collection from domestic air travel during 2000-2001 and 2001-2002.

NAB, they said, learnt that in Dec 2001 the Collectorate of Sales Tax, Karachi (East), had collected Rs800 million less from the PIA and other operators.

The audit of M/s PIA was still in progress and would be completed within a month, he added.

A chart showing the NAB progress was also circulated among the reporters, which indicated that in a list of 426 cases initiated by NAB, armed forces personnel were involved only in six cases.

The list gave no detail of the people involved in these cases. The list of the corrupt was topped by civilian bureaucrats, with 198 cases, followed by politicians who were facing 150 cases.

Another chart indicating the actual recoveries and those in progress till March 1, 2002, showed that the figure had already reached at Rs99.899 billion, including Rs62 billion recovered from the bank default and Rs2.383 billion from the plea bargain in corruption cases.

It also included Rs1.4 billion and Rs1.5 billion expected to be recovered from Avaris and Lakhanis, respectively.