Chittagong customs officials yesterday seized three luxury cars imported with false declaration.
The Lexus, Mercedes and Porche cars were imported in a container with a declaration that the shipment was a set of passenger lifts, said Mahmudul Hassan, deputy commissioner of the Customs House.
The container was brought in the name of Etacol, a company that has operations in Dhaka Export Processing Zone, said Omar Faruque, superintendent for audit, investigation and revenue of the Customs House.
Faruque said the customs officials found the cars when the container was opened at around 1:30pm.
The customs sent a letter to Etacol yesterday through its clearing and forwarding agent Mymoon Trading Corporation Ltd, he said.
Both Etacol and Mymoon Trading Corporation have denied any link to the illicit import.
“The claims of the customs officials were wrong because the importer may be another company with the same name,” Peter Seah, managing director of Etacol Bangladesh, a France-based interlining garment company, told The Daily Star by phone.
“We imported neither any lift nor any car.”
Seah threatened to take legal action against the newspapers that “wrongly quoted the company”.
He said the company also did not receive any letter from the customs house yet. “There is no reason to receive any such letter, as we did not make any import like that.”
SM Harun-ur-Rashid, managing director of Mymoon Trading Corporation, said his company was not involved in illegal imports.
He claimed the name of his company was used by somebody else. He sent a letter to the customs protesting the “name forgery”.
Customs officials found the cars in the container after the importer tried to get those released from the Chittagong Port last week without permission from the customs.
Mahmudul Hassan said the cars were imported in May and the importer submitted the “bill of entry” to the customs in June. But the container had been left untouched at the port for months, which raised suspicion among customs officials.
-With The Daily Star input
