KARACHI: The Supreme Court of Pakistan has upheld the order of Deputy Collector Model Collectorate of Customs (MCC) Appraisement charging M/s A.C.P Oil Mills Pvt. Ltd of intentionally defrauding the exchequer and depriving it of the revenue in terms of duty and taxes.
Deputy Collector had ordered the subject consignment to be confiscated with an option for the importer to redeem the same on payment of 50 percent fine of the customs value of the goods along with duty and taxes.
A penalty of Rs100,000 each was also imposed on the importer and the clearing agent M/s Cargo Channel.
According to the brief of the case, M/s A.C.P imported some material for use in its factory declaring the same under PCT 7210.5000 described as tin free steel sheet of secondary quality attracting customs duty of 10 percent.
Later it was discovered that the material so imported was electrolytic tin plate under PCT 7210.1200 on the import of which 25 percent duty was leviable.
The Deputy Collector’s order was upheld by Collector of Customs Sales Tax, Federal Excise Appeals and Customs Appellate Tribunal, Karachi.
The importer through its counsel Malik Qamar Afzal approached the Supreme Court praying that the misclassification was not deliberate and was made on the basis of details provided by the exporter and prayed to assail the penalties.
The Department through its counsel Raja Mohammad Iqbal submitted before the court that the importer had intentionally committed mis-declaration to avoid duty and taxes; that knowledge of the importer is obvious from the fact that the photo copies furnished by it to the customs authorities to customs authorities for clearance of the goods were fake and did not tally with the original that was provided later.
The Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Department and dismissed the importer’s petition.