Royal Blankets Vs Principal Commissioner (CESTAT Delhi)
Conclusion: An Excel sheet recovered from the email account of assessee can be relied upon to determine the value of imported goods, even without a certificate under Section 138C as Section 138C applies only when the document was printed or produced from a computer other than that of the assessee.
Held: Assessee was a proprietorship firm of Nitin Khandelwal. During the investigation, it emerged that apart from imports by Wide Impex, there were also invoices pertaining to consignments imported by Royal Blankets (owned by Nitin) in the Excel sheet in Nitin’s email. This led to the investigation against the assessee. A show cause notice was issued to assessee proposing to reject the transaction value in 23 Bills of Entry filed by assessee under Rule 12 of Customs Valuation (Determination of value of imported goods) Rules, 2007. Commissioner found that the declared transaction values in respect of the Bills of Entry were liable to be rejected under Valuation Rule 12. The prices indicated in the Excel sheets were taken by the Commissioner as FOB prices and not as CIF prices. Thus, the Commissioner confirmed the demand of differential customs duty of Rs. 1,85,84,364/- under section 28(4) of the Act with interest. As per assessee, the entire case was based on unsigned, unstamped Excel Sheets recovered from the email of the proprietor. The Excel sheet on which SCN and the impugned order relied was not accompanied by a certificate in section 138C, and hence it could not be relied upon. Revenue submitted that during the investigation, Nitin opened his email and from that produced copies of invoices and also Excel sheets showing the correct values and the undervalued prices. It was held that Excel sheet was printed in the office of the SIIB using the computer and printer in that office, but the Excel sheet was not in that computer. It was also not in any computer in the office or residence of Nitin. The Excel sheet was in Nitin’s Gmail. In other words, it was in some server of Gmail cloud. The officers clearly could not have issued a certificate regarding the servers of Gmail. The bench opined that the only person who would have known if that particular email ID was used during the relevant period to conduct business or not was the one who owns the Gmail ID. That person was Nitin, and he not only explained in his statement but also gave his and the exporter’s email IDs and further opened his own Gmail account using his user ID and password, which he alone knew and printed out the Excel sheet. He also explained the Excel sheet in his statement. Therefore, there was no force in this submission that no certificate in section 138C was produced. In respect of the remaining Bills of Entry, the values found in the Excel sheet must be considered as CIF values instead of as FOB values in the absence of any evidence to support that they were FOB values. Consequently, the assessable value and duty must be re-determined, stated the Tribunal. The bench set aside the demand for anti-dumping duty of Rs. 79,947/-. In view of the above, the Tribunal partly allowed the appeal and upheld the penalty imposed on the assessee under Section 114AA.
