Bimal Kumar Jain Vs Commissioner of Customs (CESTAT Delhi)
CESTAT Delhi held that imposition of penalty u/s. 114 of the Customs Act cannot be sustained in as much as goods are already exported and hence confiscation u/s. 113 cannot be sustained.
Facts- Intelligence was received by the department that M/s. Sundram Export Pvt. Ltd.4and M/s. Netcompware Pvt. Ltd. had exported CD-ROMs under Duty Entitlement Pass Book6 Scheme by grossly overvaluing it with an intention to wrongly avail DEPB scrips and thereby evade customs duty.
The case setup by the department in the show cause notice is that Sundram Export exported 96,800 pieces of CD-ROMs at highly inflated Freight on Board value of US 19$ per piece. Another exporter, by name of Netcompware, also exported a consignment of 40,000 pieces of CD-ROMs at overvalued price of US 19$ per piece. The 5 shipping bills covering the above exports were filed under the DEPB Scheme. According to the department, the overvalued export was used by the exporter to fraudulently procure DEPB scrips from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade and subsequently these DEPB scrips were sold in the open market and were thereafter used by companies to import goods without payment of duty.
