KARACHI: Justice Junaid Ghaffar of High Court of Sindh on Thursday disposed of a suit filed by Master Beverages against Collector, Pakistan Customs Port Muhammad Bin Qasim and Customs Valuation after both plaintiff and defendant Custom authorities agreed that matter of valuation be decided by the Customs Adjudication.
The plaintiff also agreed to pay the differential amount with the custom authorities while the amount of fine with the Nazir of SHC.
The bench ordered that “plaintiff without prejudice to his rights to seek release of the consignment will pay the alleged amount of duties and taxes to the Custom authorities amounting to rupees 17,11,51,513 and furnish post dated cheques of rupees 5,51,71,802 and security of Sales Tax through post dated cheques amounting to rupees 30,73,63,220”
The bench also ordered that these cheques could not be encashed till decision by the Adjudicating authority of Pakistan Customs.
The plaintiff M/s. Master Beverages and Food Limited is seeking release of a consignment imported by it containing “water/beverage filing line plant with standard accessories” from M/s. Krones AG, Germany and sought clearance through clearing agent M/s. S.M. Sadiq & Sons claiming exemption of Sales Tax in excess of 10 percent at declared value of Euro 1.13 million.
Scrutiny of the scanned documents revealed that declared value had been grossly under invoiced by the importer as compared to the values of similar/identical goods imported by other beverages companies from the same shipper M/s. Krones AG, Germany.
The investigation and verification from Al-Baraka Bank and shipper M/s Krones confirmed that the company had grossly under0invoiced the shipment. M/s Krones confirmed that the value of said plant cost 7.38 million euros, while importer/ plaintiff mentioned the cost to be Euro 1.13 million.
The Custom authorities after matching the declared values of identical consignments imported by other importers blocked the release of the consignment for gross under valuation.
The issue will now be decided by the Customs Adjudication. It may be recalled that earlier High Court had ordered release of consignment on deposit of securities of amount of duty and taxes, but the Customs authorities went into an intra-court appeal, which was granted by the divisional bench.
Deputy Collector Tahir Abbas, Principal Appraisers Asad Aleem, Ahmed Nawaz, Tariq Aziz and Babar Kabeer pursued the case efficiently.