Flemingo Dutyfree Shop Private Limited Vs Commissioner of Customs (CESTAT Kolkata)
The appeal challenged an Order-in-Original dated 18.04.2024 confirming a demand of ₹1,36,77,319 along with interest towards Cost Recovery Charges (CRC) for customs supervision services provided between July 2016 and December 2018 at a special bonded warehouse operated at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata. The warehouse licence required the licensee to avail customs supervision either on Merchant Over Time (MOT) basis or Cost Recovery Charges (CRC) basis.
The appellant contended that under Regulation 3(e) of the Special Warehouse Licensing Regulations, 2016 and paragraph 11 of CBEC Circular No. 32/2016-Cus dated 13.07.2016, MOT charges are applicable where customs officers are required once a day or once a week, whereas CRC applies only when officers are required for an entire day, the better part of a day because of distance or nature of work, more than once a day, or round-the-clock. The appellant submitted that customs officers were engaged only once a day for not more than two hours and that MOT payments had been regularly accepted for several years without objection. It also argued that no Superintendent of Customs had been specifically deputed and relied on an earlier Goa adjudication order dropping a similar CRC demand.
