Sinohydro Corporation, a Chinese state-owned company, admitted to misusing duty-free benefits in the case of equipment it brought in for Padma bridge's river training work.

As per rules, the company was supposed to send back the items it had brought into Bangladesh without paying any duty once their use had ended. But the company did not.

This prompted the Chattogram Custom House to issue eight show-cause notices to Sinohydro. The company was also given until January 4 to ship out the goods.

Sinohydro acknowledged the misuse in its response on January 14 to show-cause notices from the Chattogram Custom House. However, the misuse was unintentional.

"It is deeply regretful that we failed to deal with the above matters in a timely manner for which our head office took stern action against the responsible persons," said the letter signed by Wang Shouxing, the acting project manager.

Sinohydro failed to ship out the goods as the persons who were responsible for customs clearance had gone back to China.

The person in charge of the customs clearance process did not hand over all information and documents to the project office. As a result, the company could not renew the validity of import permission issued by the commerce ministry and the National Board of Revenue's orders for a long time.

"Further our headquarter in China warned the local office in Bangladesh to be more careful in future so that such mistakes never happen in future," the letter added.

Sinohydro responded after receiving eight show-cause notices from customs, Mohammad Fyzur Rahman, commissioner of Chattogram Customs House, told The Daily Star.

"A claim will be issued against the company any time now as they have admitted that they will not re-export," he added.

On 30 December, The Daily Star ran a report that said Sinohydro imported equipment, vehicles and accessories worth about Tk 1,145 crore over nine years using the duty-waiver facility.

The facility restricts the sale or handover of the goods to anyone in Bangladesh without the NBR's permission. However, the company had sold many of the goods and was in the process of selling others.

Sinohydro did not respond to The Daily Star's request for comment on the issue.