CONCOR CFS Vs Principal Commissioner of Customs (CESTAT Allahabad)
The Customs Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal, Allahabad allowed three connected appeals filed by a Container Freight Station (CFS) operator and its officials, setting aside penalties imposed under the Customs Act, 1962 and the Handling of Cargo in Customs Areas Regulations, 2009. The appeals arose from a common Order-in-Original dated 28.03.2025, which had imposed multiple penalties on the custodian CFS and its employees on the allegation that two export containers were allowed gate-in on the basis of a fictitious shipping bill and export application, indicating fraudulent conduct.
The Tribunal examined the factual chronology and found that the two containers had been allowed gate-in at around 02:40 hours on 16.11.2018 on the basis of valid entry permits issued earlier. A dummy export application and dummy shipping bill bearing the number “1234567” were generated later on the same day at 17:52 hours, solely for the purpose of calculating handling, storage, and shifting charges at the request of a customs broker, as the containers were proposed to be shifted to another CFS after obtaining customs permission. The Tribunal noted that this sequence of events was not disputed by the Revenue in the impugned order.
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