EDITORIAL: There is no rational explanation for how 350 luxury smuggled vehicles worth billions could have been moved through customs, registered with forged auction documentation, and sold in the open market without resistance – except that the system itself enabled it, of course. The manipulation of user IDs, creation of fake bidder details, and failure to flag obvious gaps in the WeBOC trail are the factors that point to institutional complicity, not oversight. This is not just about smuggling. It is about the weaponisation of state machinery to legitimise illegal trade. That internal user credentials were used to make these changes means accountability must begin inside the FBR, not outside. A suspended deputy collector is not an explanation. Nor is it a solution. What’s required is a full accounting of who accessed what, when, and why. Otherwise, this won’t be the last time customs data is doctored to serve criminal enterprise. The fact that these vehicles are now registered with excise departments across the country adds another layer of dysfunction. A syndicate cannot run without active or passive support from registration authorities. The issuance of customs auction documents for vehicles that were never auctioned should have raised immediate red flags. That it didn’t suggest processes designed to look the other way when it matters most. Now the department claims recovery is difficult because there’s “no mechanism to track the vehicles.” This admission is damning. That a core enforcement agency responsible for border control and revenue integrity has no tracing capability for goods cleared under its own system is not a gap in enforcement, it is the collapse of it. Even worse is the danger that action will now disproportionately target retail-level actors and unsuspecting buyers. Those who paid for these vehicles using what appeared to be legitimate documentation will now face court cases and seizures, while the bureaucrats and dealers who built this operation remain out of reach. That would only deepen the perception that in Pakistan accountability flows downward, never upward. This incident cannot be ring-fenced. If one collectorate could enable this operation, others can too. The institutional vulnerability is horizontal, not local. The risk of replication in other departments – be it tax, excise, ports, or procurement – cannot be ignored. FBR must do more than issue recovery orders. It must audit the entire WeBOC access structure and immediately restrict administrative override functions to a narrow, traceable pool. No auction should be cleared without timestamped digital trails, multi-tier approval, and cross-verification by third-party systems. None of this is beyond our technological or administrative capacity. The absence of such safeguards is not a function of incompetence. It is the cost of protecting an entrenched network. This case must be pursued to its logical end. If 350 vehicles disappeared and not one person is prosecuted, then the state will have sent a clear message: the system protects the corrupt. A public inquiry must be opened, full data must be shared with oversight committees, and criminal charges must be pursued under relevant anti-corruption and criminal codes. Until a mechanism is in place that deters this sort of capture and ensures meaningful punishment, there is no reason to believe this will not happen again. In fact, it is probably already happening elsewhere. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025