Monday April 25
DHAKA (
Reuters) - Bangladeshi customs officials found luxury cars, large-screen television sets and refrigerators in a container declared to be carrying metal scrap -- so they made it just that at a public ceremony on Monday.
Hundreds of people watched as officials from the National Board of Revenue (NBR) used bulldozers to crush a Mercedes Benz and a Toyota car and other luxury goods at a railway container terminal in Dhaka.
NBR chairman Khairuzzaman Chowdhury said a trading firm had sought to evade customs duties by falsely declaring that the container carried iron scrap.
"They wanted to befool us by saying they brought in scrapped metals...so we are giving them the same. They, or anyone like them, will not forget this," he told reporters at the site.
Cash-strapped Bangladesh is trying hard to increase domestic revenue ahead of announcing the budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year, beginning next July.
Officials say tax revenues were 9 percent short of target in the first nine month of the current 2004-05 fiscal year, partly owing to lower-than-expected import taxes.
