Officials of Customs Intelligence & Investigation Directorate (CIID) today seized more than 100 illegal iPhone by conducting a drive at Bashundhara Shopping Complex in Panthapath and Molly Capita Centre in Gulshan here.
The officials said the seized phone sets were entered in the country dodging all duties and taxes.
A team comprising with customs intelligent, BTRC officials and Dhaka Metropolitan Police started the more than two-hour raid simultaneously at two shopping malls from 12 pm.
CIID Assistant Directors Sahiduzzaman Sarkar and H M Shariful Hasan led the team at Bashundhara Shopping Complex and Molly Capita Centre respectively during the drive at different stores including Phone Exchange and Gadget Zone of Bashundhara Shopping Complex.
Sahiduzzaman told reporters that the government has been losing huge amount of duty due to sell of these unauthorized mobile sets, mostly entered the country through personal baggage. These illegal phone sets are not recorded in BTRC files, he said.
“Today, we gave a message to the mobile store owners that the government won’t allow to sell any unauthorized illegal mobile phone set in Bangladesh market. Our drive will be continuing in the coming days,” he added.
He said some stores do sell even fake and refurbished iPhone sets to the customers pretending as new original sets.