Pakistan: OECD, HMRC and FBR collaborating under TIWB Pilot Project on Criminal Investigation

By: Sumria Mahmood Qazi, Chief (int. Taxes Operations), FBR Pakistan

HMRC and the Pakistan Federal Board of Revenue have partnered under the OECD’s Tax Inspectors without Borders programme for Criminal Investigations since July 2022. The current programme is supposed to end in July 2024. The programme is supervised by the Directorate General of International Tax Operations through which the officers of the Intelligence and Investigation Directorate General of FBR are trained with a focus on following:

1.    Hands on training on live criminal cases in the fields of Income Tax and Sales Tax Evasion and the associated money laundering offences, and

2.    Capacity building and value addition on various areas identified during the classroom based training.

So far HMRC criminal investigation expert Mr. Fahad Akhtar has conducted 5 in-person and numerous online sessions. These have included several workshops including, but not limited to, presentations on criminal investigations procedures in HMRC, legislation and tax laws and whole of government approach to tackle fiscal crime and a comparison of these with the Pakistani legislation and investigative procedures used by FBR. The workshops were attended by a number of I&I investigators.

Director General (International Tax Operations), Federal Board of Revenue Ms. Aisha Farooq termed the HMRC led FBR-TIWB Project a great success and has hoped that the project will continue beyond July 2024. She aims to include more areas such as help on smooth launch of the case management system, a robust referral mechanism, investigative planning and resource management and support and training on grass root level from evidence collection, preservation and presentation of evidence in court among others will be the focus of training.