The Pakistan International Airline (PIA) is facing a situation where the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) has taken action to freeze 26 of its bank accounts due to the airline's failure to pay federal excise duty.
The FBR reported that the PIA owes a substantial amount of Rs8.84 billion in federal excise duty, of which they were supposed to pay Rs2 billion this month. However, this payment commitment remains unfulfilled.
The FBR has attributed this issue to the PIA's senior management, accusing them of diverting funds into separate accounts instead of depositing the federal excise duty into the national treasury, which is collected from passengers.
As a result of these actions, the FBR has not only frozen the accounts but also filed a complaint with the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) under the anti-money laundering act against the PIA management for their utilization of the federal excise duty funds.