2014 (12) TMI 938
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....aled that large scale fraudulent exports of ready-made garments under Buy Back System were effected and excess ineligible Drawback availed by a syndicate of operators comprising of Shri Badshah Mallik, Shri Shehroz Malik and Shri Sitaram Jadhav in the name of fictitious/bogus export firms by resorting to gross overvaluation of the export goods. No foreign remittances were received against the subject exports. Neither Shri Sitaram Jadhav nor the other two members of the syndicate had a valid Custom House Agent (CHA) licence required for Customs clearances of the export goods and as such Shri Sitaram Jadhav negotiated with the various CHA Firms for allowing their CHA licences to be used by him without actually requiring them to attend to the ....
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....eas. 3. The statement of other persons were also recorded and thereafter an enquiry was conducted under CHALR, 2004 for violation of Regulations 12, 13(a), 13(b), 13(d), 13(e) and 13(n) of the CHALR, 2004, against the appellants and the Enquiry Officer held that all the charges against the appellants have been proved. Thereafter, an enquiry was initiated against the CHA and the article of charge was confirmed. Consequently the CHA licence was revoked. Therefore, the appellants are before us. 4. Shri J.C. Patel, learned Advocate appearing for the appellants submitted that the adjudicating authority was not consistent while taking the decision to revoke the CHA licence of the appellant as in the same investigation another CHA name....
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....was a temporary employee of the appellant therefore, the charge under Regulation 12 for transferring the CHA licence does not stand proved. Therefore, the impugned order is liable to be set aside on this ground. 4.2 He further submitted that the Commissioner has not considered the decision in the case of Thawerdas Wadhoomal v. Commissioner of Customs - 2008 (221) E.L.T. 252 (Tri.-Mum.) wherein this Tribunal considered that procuring work on commission basis does not amount to sub-letting or otherwise transferring the CHA licence to other persons and the said order has been confirmed by the Hon'ble High Court of Bombay as reported in 2009 (240) E.L.T. A143 (Bom.). 4.3 Therefore, he prayed that the CHA licence is under suspension ....
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....nother argument advanced by the learned Advocate is that the facts of the case are similar to the case of Frontier Shipping Agencies Pvt. Ltd. (supra). We have gone through the charge against the CHA in the case of Frontier Shipping Agencies Pvt. Ltd. (supra). In that case, the clearance was handled by Shri Vishwas Ramchandra Lanke who was a regular employee of the CHA had never physically attended to the examination of the export goods and Shri Vinayak Bethekar (employee of Shri Sitaram Jadhav and not the employee of the CHA) who used to attend to the examination of the export goods. On these findings the learned Commissioner of Customs came to the conclusion that the charge is not proved. The same view was taken by this Tribunal in the ca....