Case Law Details
Naman Gupta Vs Commissioner of Customs Airport And General (Delhi High Court)
Delhi High Court held that Customs Broker cannot be held liable for not able to trace exporters as ‘Let Export Orders’ already issued and goods already exported out of the country. Accordingly, order revoking customs broker license set aside.
Facts- The petitioner was granted a license to operate as a customs broker (CB). The instant matter pertains to the previous exports of ball bearings, investigation of which, was initiated by SIB, ACC, Kolkata on the basis of four live export consignments of unbranded ball bearings filed by M/s. Gupta Vyapar. These four consignments were highly over-valued for export to defraud the exchequer by way of getting very high input tax credit (ITC) Refund and other export-related incentives. Thereafter, data pertaining to export of ball bearings was analyzed for the period 01.01.2020 to 12.09.2020, wherein, it was found that a total of 35 consignments of similar/ identical description had been exported, out of which 23 consignments had been cleared by M/s Naman Gupta & Associates (Custom Broker).
It was seen that the petitioner was involved in the clearance of 23 shipping bills of ball bearings filed by nine different exporters. Out of nine exporters, five were found to be non-existent. Accordingly, a purported offence report was forwarded by the Deputy Commissioner of Customs, who initiated action against the petitioner for the violation of Regulations 10(d), 10(m), 10(n) & 10(q) of the Customs Broker Licensing Regulation, 2018 (CBLR, 2018).
Notably, respondent agreed with the findings of the Inquiry Officer that CB has failed to comply with the provisions of Regulations 10 (d), 10 (m), 10 (n) & 10 (q) of the CBLR, 2018. Accordingly, order was passed revoking the customs broker license; forfeiting the entire security deposit, and imposing penalty of Rs. 50,000.
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