CBI books 18 customs officials for 'bribe to ignore' fake bills

MUMBAI: CBI has registered three separate corruption cases against 18 customs officials who were posted at JNPT, along with five exporters.
In two cases, the customs officials helped fake imports/exports to claim fraudulent duty drawback of Rs 9.5 crore, CBI claimed. In the third case, a customs official who was investigating these syndicates collected Rs 25 lakh bribe from the businessmen for not taking action against them, it said.
CBI carried out searches in 24 places in Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Goa and Jammu on Wednesday. It said FIRs were registered earlier this week; a preliminary inquiry was conducted last year.
In 2017, the superintendents of customs and preventive officers entered into a criminal conspiracy with each other and the accused businessmen, the agency said in the FIR said. The businessmen had filed 93 forged shipping bills for export/import of goods and the accused officials had processed them without physical movement of the goods and without examination of actual documents/containers, it added.
In the third FIR, CBI said an inspector from the preventive unit was allotted certain cases to investigate and gather intelligence related to misuse of export benefits. The inspector learnt about the fraudulent claim of duty drawback by a syndicate on the basis of bogus shipping bills.
In order to obtain illegal gratification, from Aug-Sept 2017, the inspector entered into a criminal conspiracy with one of the businessmen who was the mastermind of the syndicate, said the FIR. The inspector initially demanded bribe of Rs 1 crore from the businessman and then accepted Rs 25 lakh with the condition that he would get Rs 10,000 later for each fraudulent bill to not take action against the syndicate, it said.