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2020 (3) TMI 531 - AT - CustomsMis-declaration of imported goods - Mobile Point of Sale (MPOS) Devices - POS (Point of Sale) devices - suppression of actual value of goods - undervaluation - non-inclusion of transfer/licence fee - non-submission of BIS and ETA/WPC licence - Confiscation - penalty - HELD THAT:- The importer/appellant and its Executive Director Ms. Latha Priyadarshini were mis-classifying MPOS/POS consignments in utter disregard to the provisions of Customs Tariff Act and at their own free will and thus they have certainly resorted to mis-declaration and mis-classification of the import consignments with an intent to evade duty and to avoid compliance of other allied Acts as mentioned in preceding paras and thereby making all the import consignments liable for confiscation on this count under Section 111 of the Customs Act, 1962. Valuation of the import consignments of MPOS/POS - HELD THAT:- The per unit price declared under various Bills of Entry have varied between U.S. $ 97 per unit to as low as U.S. $ 1.45 per unit for D-180 Model of MPOS. It has been established by the investigations that a ‘Master Distribution Agreement’ has been signed by the appellant – importer and its Executive Director Ms. Latha Priyadarshini with Pax Technology Ltd. Hongkong on 1 November 2014. On perusal of Appendix A of the master distributor agreement it reflects that the price of hardware of various models of the MPOS and POS have been provided by the Hongkong based company and it has very specially been provided that apart from the hardware price the licence fee for software for D series equipments of MPOS will be U.S. $ 45 per unit, for S series the licence fee was fixed at U.S. $ 60 per unit and for R series it was fixed at U.S. $ 40 per unit. This very fact indicates that the importing firm and its Executive Director were fully aware about the import value of the imported equipments - The arguments advanced by Ms. Latha Priyadarshini and the company are not acceptable in the facts and circumstances as well as legally as per the provision of Section 46 of the Customs Act, 1962 of sub-Section (iv) the importer presenting the Bill of Entry is required to subscribe to a declaration as to the truth and contents of Bills of Entry. Since the declarations made by the importer – appellant and its director have been found grossly mis-declared on the counts of description, classification and value of the consignments. Ms. Latha Priyadarshini in her statement dated 19/01/2016 and other statement has admitted the facts of mis-declaration. There are no illegality in the conclusions reached in the impugned order-in-original regarding confiscation of the import consignments, confiscation of customs duty and with regard to imposition of penalty under various Sections of the Customs Act on the appellant importer and its Director Mrs. Latha Priyadarshini. We advice the Chief Commissioner to revisit the standard operating procedure in this regard to ensure that the system is enabled to take care of the instances where a blatant mis-declaration is avoided by the importers to bye-pass the Risk Management Module. We also direct the Chief Commissioner of Customs to consider whether it should be necessary to cause a vigilance enquiry to determine how the consignments were cleared when there were so many mis-declaration in description as well as classification of the imported Mobile Point of Sale equipments. Appeal dismissed.
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