Huge cooking oil fraud by three companies

An alleged one-billion-rupee fraud involving false declarations by three major palm oil importing companies has been detected by the Customs, a senior official said yesterday.

The three importers had been declaring their consignments as ‘unrefined oil’ though they had been importing ‘refined oil’, thereby depriving the Government of Rs 30 a kilogram in taxes, the official said. This year, they had imported more than 28 million kilograms so far.

A full report on the fraud has been compiled by the Customs Preventive section Assistant Superintendent Sanath Fernando and handed over to Customs Director General Jagath Wijeweera.

According to the report, the three main cooking oil importers have been importing consignments from Malaysia and India for the past several years and have allegedly been declaring the stock as unrefined cooking oil.

Detections had earlier been made about the false declarations, but no action taken, the official said.

The latest detection was made last week at a warehouse in Colombo.

The false declaration has had a major impact on the genuine importers forcing them to reduce their imports as they could not compete with the companies under-declaring their consignments.

The Sunday Times learns that the Customs Director General has called a meeting of officials to discuss further action against the importers.