Customs officers waiting for posting for 3 years placed in ‘admin pool’?

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has not found appropriate to initiate action against any of the tax officials who were placed at the “admin pool” in May-July 2024.

As per details, the FBR had placed more than four dozen senior Inland Revenue Service (IRS) and Customs officers at “admin pool” in April and July this year on the reports of intelligence agencies.

The officials on “Admin Pool” are not under suspension, but they are not allowed to do any kind of official work.

Later, the office-bearers of the Officers Association of Pakistan Customs Service and the Interim Committee of the Inland Revenue Service had conveyed their concerns to the FBR about the placement of senior most officers of both services on the “Admin Pool” which was rejected by the tax authorities. Sources said that the FBR placed those Customs officers at the admin pool who were waiting for postings for the last two to three years.

Interestingly, the FBR, on a pick and choose policy, transferred one senior officer of grade 20 of IRS from Islamabad to another station who won numerous cases for the department involving tax over Rs 20 billion and whose one assessment order passed against a financial institution and withholding tax audit strategy were also shared by the FBR among all field formations for replication and guidance.

Sources said the FBR had started work on preparing a new transfer policy, but this has not been notified due to unknown reasons.

Sources claimed that some officers, who were not involved in any sort of wrongdoings, decided to challenge admin pool placement in courts.

They opined that the department should also share intelligence agencies reports with us in order to challenge the alleged corruption charges.

When contacted, the FBR sources, on the condition of anonymity, said that the government is suffering huge revenue loss on account of transfer of dozens of senior officials to Admin Pool. These officials are regularly taking salary but contributing nothing to the FBR.

Instead, junior officials have been promoted to replace slots of these senior Admin Pool officials.

So far, the FBR has not found any concrete evidence of corruption against these officials. This is evident from the fact that the FBR has not issued any charge sheets to these officials or initiated disciplinary proceedings against them. The officials on the Admin Pool have not been served with any show cause notices. Apparently, there were issues of refunds in few cases, but statements of allegations need to be served to corrupt tax officials, if any, they added.

Sources well-aware of the developments further revealed that delay in action against these officials is only due to the reason that the officials have not been confronted with any credible evidence of corruption for issuing charge sheets to them.

As a result of delay, the FBR has failed to get benefits from the experience of these tax officials, which were labelled as corrupt tax officials without providing them any opportunity to explain their position, the officials added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024