Misconduct Leads to the Dismissal of an Officer from FBR

In recent news, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) dismissed an officer from the civil service. It was claimed that he was responsible for ‘misconduct’ and ‘inefficiency’, as well as raising the bet for more than a 100 cases, which had been pending for years.

The dismissal orders made it clear that the competent authority vetted all the relevant material from the case, along with all its aspects. Consequently, it decided that it was inevitable to impose a major penalty upon the accused, Dr. Sajid Hussain Arain, who was then dismissed from the FBR. 

Arain was working as a grade-19 officer at the Inland Revenue Service. This was not the first time that he was dismissed. Previously as well, Arain was let go on account of integrity issues. The FBR headquarters revealed that he was last posted at the Chief of its headquarters in the City of Lights. 

When Arain was first dismissed, he made efforts to secure relief from the tribunal. Eventually, he had emerged victorious and managed to stay on. Mohammad Bakhtiar, the Member Administrator of the FBR, was the authorized officer assigned to the case. 

On the 29th of August 2019, the director general at the time, Tanveer Malik, had taken to defining Arain. According to him, the dismissed officer was nothing more than a hardened criminal, who had brought shame on the civil service of Pakistan. These words were spoken at the proceedings of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance. 

Malik further added that Arain’s crimes also involved issuing bogus part refunds. The standing committee had taken it upon itself to look over the issue of corruption cases, which had been pending for disposal for several years at the FBR. As of November of 2015, more than 180 officers of the FBR had been facing inquiries. They were being investigated under the Efficiency and Disciplinary Rules 1973. 

Even today, the cases of these allegedly corrupt officers remain pending on account of the apparent support that they received from people on the inside of the FBR. In a handful of cases, the charges of inefficiency and corruption have been proved against these officers. 

However, some of them were able to obtain stay orders from themselves. When the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, was elected, he vowed that he would weed out corruption from its roots in the FBR. To date, the revenue board has not made any progress in any of the cases. 

Nadeem Rizvi, as spokesman for the FBR, indicated that around 124 inquiries are currently underway against those officers belonging to grade-17 to 21. 

Another FBR officer revealed that two additional cases of officers working in grade-18 and 19 will be decided in the upcoming weeks. The integrity drive of the revenue board, up until recently, was only focused on low-grade staff. 

Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, the Finance Minister, just last week made his displeasure known at the lack of integrity displayed by the top tax management at the FBR.