The New Delhi bench of the Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) quashed the Customs duty demand which was imposed on Customs Broker (CB) for the import of Vontron make RO membranes on ground of non-violation of Regulations 10(n) of the Customs Broker Licence Regulations (CBLR),2018.
NPL Impex Pvt. Ltd, the appellant assessee was a Customs Broker and had imported Vontron make RO Membranes and Sandeep Jain was the mastermind and the beneficial owner for all the imports made by those six firms who had deliberately the value and description of goods.
The assessee appealed against the order passed by the Commissioner (Appeals) for the revocation of the Customs Broker license.
A.K. Seth, Chinmaya Seth, and Khushboo Seth, the counsels for the assessee contended that the assessee was not made a notice in the show cause notice where the misdeclaration and gross undervaluation are alleged to have been committed by the six importers and by the beneficial owner of these imports namely Sandeep Jain.
Also submitted that the violation of the provisions had wrongly been alleged and all the findings in the order under challenge are alleged either to be wrong or to be based on surmises and assumptions and also it was wrongly been alleged that the Customs Broker was aware that the Importer-Exporter Code (IEC) had been misused.
Nagendra Yadhav, the counsel for the department relied on the decisions made by the lower authorities and contended that the assessee had deliberately mis-declared the value and description of goods by willful misstatement and suppression with an intent to evade payment of customs duty.
The Bench observed that there was an apparent consensual arrangement between Sandeep Jain and the IEC holders which had nowhere been barred under CBLR and in any circumstance the assessee cannot be held responsible for the reason that admittedly he was not the party to the alleged misdeclaration and undervaluation nor department could produce any evidence that the assessee had been a beneficiary of this arrangement.
The two-member bench comprising Rachana Gupta (Judicial) and Subba Rao (Technical) held that there was no violation of Regulations 10(d) and 10(n) of CBLR and quashed the Customs Duty demand imposed on the assessee while allowing the appeal filed by the assessee.
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