No trace of 112 luxury cars imported under Carnet facility

At least 112 luxury vehicles, including many sport utility vehicles (SUVs), imported using Carnet de Passage en Douane (CPD) through Chittagong Port between 2007 and 2012 have reportedly been traceless. Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate (CIID) say non-resident Bangladeshis, diplomats, public representatives, persons entitled to special facilities, and tourists, mostly foreign nationals of Bangladeshi origin, imported the vehicles, but none of those was re-exported as per the rules. Interestingly, the authorities concerned have been left in the dark regarding the present whereabouts of the vehicles. After bringing such the vehicles in Bangladesh, the owners later sell them out. Most often the buyers ply the cars on the roads using fake documents and registration number. Bangladeshi-born British citizens, particularly those hailing from Sylhet region have imported a number of the vehicles, said CIID sources, adding, each of the vehicles has evaded duties worth up to Tk2 crore. The Carnet de Passages, an international customs facility, allows tourists to temporarily import their private vehicles without paying any duty for a limited period on condition of re-exporting them at the end of their stay. An importer is bound to send back his or her vehicle to the country of origin within a year, but in special cases the duration to use the vehicles in Bangladesh can be extended up to two years. When concerned, CIID  Assistant Director Tarek Mahmud said: “Though the 121 luxury vehicles had been brought into the country from 2007 to 2012, those cars were not re-exported within the stipulated time. Rather, those vehicles are illegally plying in Bangladesh.Luxury vehicle dumping spreeOn the back of an intense CIID crackdown against the vehicles, the owners started to dump those, ostensibly to avoid facing the music. “We have intensified our drives to seize the illegal luxury vehicles in Chittagong. Some 50 such vehicles were also seized from Dhaka alone in the last few months,” said the CIID official. Meanwhile, a customs  Intelligence date shows that as many as nine luxury vehicles were seized in Chittagong from last June till May 4 with four of them confiscated this year so far. In the latest raid, a Mercedes-Benz jeep and a Mercedes-Benz car were seized from a garage at the port city’s Muradpur area on May 3. The NBR had earlier scrapped the facility in 2013, soon after it found some unscrupulous car importers were using this facility just to import and sell those cars by evading import taxes. A Dhaka Tribune report published on April 8, 2016 said over 300 luxury cars were imported by then.