The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered four separate corruption cases against 18 Customs officials for allegedly helping five exporters to claim fraudulent duty drawback of over Rs9 crore. In 2017, an investigation by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Mumbai zonal unit, unearthed a syndicate involved in fraudulently availing duty drawback by filing bogus shipping bills. Several Customs officers were found to be involved in the processing of these bogus bills.
The 4 cases
According to the CBI, in the first case, during April-June 2017, the accused persons prepared, filed and processed 93 bogus/ forged shipping bills of 20 Importer Exporter Codes (IECs) without physical movement of goods or examination of actual documents/ containers and passed the Let Export Orders (LEO). In furtherance of the criminal conspiracy, container numbers of the shipping bills were shown as the goods were exported from Jawaharlal Nehru Customs House (JNCH) port, which resulted in fraudulent disbursement of duty drawback amount of Rs4,74,90,899 to 20 companies.
In the second case, during June-July and September 2017, using the same modus operandi, the accused processed 100 forged shipping bills of 14 IECs, which resulted in fraudulent disbursement of duty drawback amount of Rs4,04,90,661 to 14 companies.
In the third case, during August-September 2017, the accused forged 11 IECs resulting in fraudulent disbursement of duty drawback amount of Rs7,08,615 to 11 companies.
In the fourth case, the CBI has booked a customs inspector (preventive officer) for allegedly demanding Rs1 crore as bribe for not parting with export documents related to the bogus shipping bills and later allegedly agreeing to accept Rs25 lakh from the other co-accused.
