Over the last six years, unscrupulous traders and agents in Bangladesh have avoided paying the equivalent of around US$83 million in customs duties on imported fruit alone at two land ports in Bangladesh according to a recent investigation.

Investigators in an official anti-corruption task force established to probe into customs evasion at the Hili and Burimari land ports say they used anomalies between letters of credit (L/Cs) and other documentation to help assess the scale of the problem.

Irregularities

The anti-corruption task force combed through six years of the two ports' records and detected irregularities in documentation apparently arranged by either importers or clearing and forwarding agents, who were allegedly working in collaboration with customs and bank officials.

The task force - made up of army and police officers as well as officials from the National Board of Revenue and the Anti-Corruption Commission -found irregularities in documents for several types of imported goods.

Fruit however appears to be have been the most popular choice of goods for importers and agents intent on evading customs duty payments.

L/C anomalies

One investigator told local media how the task revealed the scale of customs evasion at the two ports. "We detected the anomalies after verifying import manifesto records with the customs at the ports and L/C documents with banks," he said.

The investigator explained that the task force had detected banks making full payments against import L/Cs that specified far larger quantities of fruit than had been declared in documentation submitted to customs.

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