PESHAWAR: The National Accountability Bureau has approved an inquiry against officers and officials of the customs department Peshawar for illegal clearance of luxury vehicles by mis-declaring their specifications in order to reduce the applicable duty and taxes in return for receiving bribes and kickbacks.

The approval in this regard was given at a meeting of the regional board of National Accountability Bureau, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with Brig (R) Farooq Naser Awan, Director General NAB (KP), in the chair, according to a statement issued here on Sunday.

The meeting was attended by directors, additional directors, case officers, senior legal consultants and other concerned officers. Scores of decisions were taken during the meeting.

It was stated that during the initial security of record it was discovered that luxury vehicles of 3000CC and above were declared of low specification as per valuation rules thus, causing low base price for calculation of duties and taxes, because of which the national economy suffered loss of hundreds of millions of rupees.

Besides this, the NAB regional board decided to file reference against officers and officials of DI Khan tehsil municipal administration and others for corruption and corrupt practices and misuse of authority.

The officials of TMA DI Khan illegally approved map for the construction of a plaza (Jinnah Medical Complex) on state land on the circular road DI Khan. The total amount involved in the case stood at Rs145 million.

Concluding the meeting, the NAB director general appealed to the general public to join hands with the bureau for eradication of corruption from the province.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2017