The Chennai Bench of the Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT), quashed the suspension of registration as authorized courier on observing that there is no role of courier service in smuggling gold.
The officers obtained 58 pieces of courier parcels from the custodian at the courier terminal Chennai Airport. Vijay, who is the custodian, submitted a statement showing the courier wise break-up of the 58 pieces. It was found that 34 pieces of courier parcels were booked through the appellant.
The present show cause notice was issued to the appellant, M/s.UPS Jet Air Express Pvt. Ltd, under Regulation 14 of the Courier Imports and Exports (Clearance) Regulations, 1998 proposing to revoke the registration as authorized courier and also for forfeiture of the security deposit. After due process of law, the original authority vide order ordered for revocation of registration granted to the appellant as authorized courier and also ordered for forfeiture of Rs.10 lakhs being the security deposit made by them for registration.
The Counsel submitted that in the present case, the entire manipulation and clandestine clearance of the parcels/consignments was done without the knowledge of the appellant and by an employee of the appellant. In the show cause notice, it was alleged that appellant allowed his employee Naveen Kumar to manipulate their system so as to tamper the import manifest and smuggle high value goods through courier. In fact, the appellant had not allowed or given any instruction to Naveen Kumar to manipulate the system.
Harendra Singh Pal appeared for the Department. It was pointed out that the appellant had not taken due diligence for import of the consignments. If the appellant had obtained authorization of the consignee such incident would not have happened.
A Two Member Bench comprising Vasa Seshagiri Rao, Technical Member and CS Sulekha Beevi, Judicial Member observed that “The appellant has cooperated with the investigation so as to bring out the truth. On appreciation of the evidence, we do not find grounds to hold that the appellant had played any role in the incident. In such circumstances, the order of revocation of the license cannot be sustained and requires to be set aside.”
“However, as the appellant has not obtained authorization from the importer, we are of the view that the forfeiture of security deposit would be adequate. Forfeiture of Rs.10 lakhs is on the higher side. We hold that forfeiture of Rs.5,00,000/- would be sufficient” the Tribunal noted.
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