The appeal has been filed by M/s Swastik Cargo Agency, the appellant against the order whereby the Commissioner of Customs (Airport & General), New Customs House, New Delhi revoked the Customs Broker License of the appellant for violating the various provisions of Customs Broker License Regulation, 2013 (CBLR).
The allegation of the Department is that no office of Customs Broker (CB) was found at the given address. The Partner of CB was contacted on the mobile number she refused to divulge her residential address. The statement of the Chartered Accountant was recorded under Section 108 of the Customs Act, 1962 who informed that the office address of the CB was under construction for past 1½ years and she occasionally visited his office for meeting her client.
In view of the aforesaid irregularities detected, the CB license was suspended under Regulation 19(1) of CBLR, 2013by the Commissioner of Customs (General) for violation of Regulation 11(d), 11(e), 11(n) and 11(o) of CBLR, 2013.
All the three exporters, have been found to be bogus and non-existent firms, fraudulently created so as to claim undue drawback benefits. As a result, neither the Partners of the CB nor their employees ever met any of the exporters who were actually farmers and have no knowledge about there being exporters.
It is also an admitted position that the export assignments and the KYC documents were provided and the authorization was also from the said freight forwarder. In the circumstances, there is no scope for the CB to obtain authorization from the fictitious and non-existent exporters.
The entire transaction was fraudulently conducted. The exporters were found to be fictitious, non-existent who were actually farmers and had no knowledge about their being exporters and therefore the CB could not bring them before the Customs Authorities.
The Coram consisting of P. V. Subba Rao, Member (Technical) and Binu Tamta, Member (Judicial)observed that “We agree with the submission of the learned AR that forgery nullifies everything. The facts of the present case clearly show the fraudulent manner in which the exports have been made where 90% of the goods were short and nearly 70 lakhs of rupees were taken as duty drawback thereby defrauding the revenue.”
“It has to be concluded that CB had put himself into the shoes of fraudsters who were using forged documents of fictitious persons who were actually not involved with the said fraudulent exports to claim duty drawbacks” the Tribunal concluded
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