The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Intelligence Wing initiating action against sugar mills as notices were issued to two sugar mills on Monday, reported 24NewsHD TV channel. 

The TV channel quoting its sources said these sugar mills have been found in selling sugar to anonymous owners. Sources maintained that the scope of investigation against sugar mills is being extended.

The FBR sent notices to sugar mills that were found hiding their sugar sales record and income tax returns, the TV channel reported. Sources maintained that these sugar mills were involved in selling sugar to benami accounts.

Earlier a commission constituted by the interior ministry to carry out a forensic audit of sugar mills had audited the record of six sugar mills including Prime Minister Imran Khan’s close aide Jahangir Khan Tareen’s owned JDW sugar mills, PML-Q’s leader Moonis Elahi’s owned Alliance sugar mills and Salman Shahbaz owned Al Arabiya sugar mills.

The forensic report uncovered the gross misconduct by the sugar industry in the form of under-reported sugar sales, sale of commodity to benamidar (unnamed) buyers, double booking, over-invoicing, under-invoiced sale of bagasse and molasses which resulted in cost inflation and many other corporate frauds have been detected in the transactions of sugar mills.

The report has highlighted that all of them have been found involved in committing corporate frauds to the tune of billions of rupees.

According to the report, the quantum of sales transactions booked/invoiced to unregistered person by six sugar mills under forensic audit amounts to Rs150,217,451,253, which is 72% of total sales value during the aforementioned period.

The forensic audit shows that mostly the benami sales transactions are recorded against unregistered persons. Out of total sales of JDW Company of around Rs100 billion, ‘sale of around Rs. 71.8 billion is suspected to be benami transactions’ during the period from October 2017 to February 2020.

Out of total sales booked/Invoiced of Rs723,491,913,194 by all the sixty-six (66) sugar mills in the country, the quantum of sale transactions/sales booked/invoiced to unregistered persons/buyers during the period from October 2017 to February 2020 comes to Rs.517,272,369,222 (71 % of total sales value), as per FBR's data.