Akbarali Mohemedali Mukadam Vs Principal Commissioner of Customs (General) (CESTAT Mumbai)
CESTAT Mumbai held that Customs Broker is not an officer of Customs who would have an expertise to identify mis-declaration of goods. Accordingly, appeal partly allowed.
Facts- The appellants herein is a Customs Broker (CB). In pursuance of specific intelligence regarding customs duty evasion in import consignment CFS was put on hold and further investigation ware carried out. Notably, the goods declared in the B/E was 232500 pieces of ‘back cover’ (mobile accessories) with a declared value of Rs.6,00,548/-. During the course of examination, it was found that the said imported consignment contained 2,80,000 pieces of ‘tempered glass screen’ of value re-determined as Rs.8,23,608/-. Therefore, the department had concluded that there was a gross mis-declaration of description and quantity of goods, in the import consignment for which the B/E was filed through the appellants CB.
Jurisdictional Principal Commissioner of Customs (General), Mumbai-I had concluded that there is a prima facie case against the appellants for having contravened Regulations 1(4), 10(d), 10(e), 10(n) and 13(12) of CBLR, 2018. Accordingly, he had immediately suspended the CB license of the appellants under Regulation 16(1) of ibid, vide Order No. 17/2021-22 dated 27.08.2021; and such suspension was continued vide Order No. 26/2021-22 dated 12.10.2021.
