Pakistan: Foreign national accuses custom officials of taking bribe at Islamabad Airport
Dec 24, 2022
Islamabad [Pakistan], December 24 : A foreign national has alleged in his complaint to the Deputy Collector Customs Airport Islamabad that a Customs official at Islamabad Airport regularly took hefty amounts in bribe money from him in return for passing the personal goods accompanying him during his visit to Islamabad, Pakistan Today reported.
The foreign national in his complaint told the Deputy Collector Customs that a customs official was passed his personal baggage from the airport without any hassle in return for huge amounts of bribe money taken from him, as per the news report.
In his complaint, the foreign national in one of his landings at Islamabad Airport said that the customs official took bribe money from him and gave his facilitation to another official named Zia who again asked for bribe money which resulted in doubling the cost of his facilitation at the airport.
In the complaint submitted to the Deputy Collector, the foreign national said that he was ready to pay a good amount of money at Islamabad airport for the passage of his excess baggage, according to Pakistan Today. However, he is not ready to pay double the amount of money that he had to pay to two customs officials.
Citing sources, the report said that the customs department was involved in a 'mad money making spree everywhere', which includes facilitating the smuggling of contraband goods on roads and facilitating valuation frauds and by clearing imported goods against locally fabricated invoice values on custom stations.
According to Pakistan Today report, Additional Deputy Collector Islamabad said that the incident happened before he got posted. However, he shared details of another similar incident in which one foreign national misbehaved with the customs staff posted at Islamabad airport.
"Customs authorities detained 32 wine bottles from a foreign national, adding that he claimed that the foreign national misbehaved with staff but the same were not released as I had strictly ordered for zero tolerance", Pakistan Today quoted Additional Deputy Collector Islamabad as saying.
