PESHAWAR, Sept 7: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has launched a campaign to seize non-customs duty paid vehicles in the NWFP.

FBR’s intelligence and investigation wing had physically checked records of dozens of luxury vehicles in Abbottabad and Mansehra and seized 11 non-duty paid cars, FBR sources told Dawn here on Friday.

The seized vehicles include Land Cruisers, Hilux Surf, Toyota Corolla, Mercedes Benz and Lite Aee Van. The vehicles have been shifted to Peshawar for further proceedings.

The sources said that organised gangs were involved in the cross-border smuggling of these luxury cars. “The smugglers bring such vehicles to tribal agencies of Mohmand and Khyber and then take them to Malakand and Swat regions.”

They said the Malakand region was considered to be a hub of non-customs paid vehicles and roughly over 80,000 such vehicles were currently plying there.

From the Malakand region, the sources said, the smuggled vehicles found their way to adjoining Mansehra and Abbottabad via Karakoram Highway and then to other parts of the country.

They said that owners of the vehicles seized in Abbottabad and Mansehra had placed fake number plates and tempered records of the cars registered in Punjab and Balochistan.

The number of non-customs paid cars had witnessed a surge last year because of the government policy of regularising the illegal vehicles. The facility was withdrawn in the current budget.

Under the policy, the possessor of a non-customs paid vehicle could regularise his car after paying a certain amount of taxes to the FBR. “The facility was misused by some elements and the practice had become an organised business,” the sources added.