- (1.) This is an appeal by the Commissioner of Customs (Import), under Section 130 of the Customs Act, 1962 ('Act'), against the impugned order dated 17th December 2014 passed by the Customs, Excise & Service Tax Appellate Tribunal ('CESTAT') in Appeal Nos. C/58871 & 60232/2013-CU (DB).
(2.) Respondent No. 1 is M/s. Buhariwal Logistics of New Delhi and Respondent No. 2 is Mr. Vishwas Uday Singh Laad, a resident of Karnataka.
(3.) The background to the present appeal is that the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence ('DRI') is stated to have received an intelligence that one Mr. Sumit Walia @ Sunni Walia was importing high end luxury cars from various foreign suppliers by misdeclaring them as 'new' whereas such cars were old and registered in the country of export prior to the export. Since second hand cars attracted higher customs duty than new cars, there was an obvious loss of revenue as a result of such import. Moreover, according to the Appellant, it was revealed that that Mr. Walia was also involved in under-invoicing the value of these vehicles at the time of import thereby evading the differential customs duty. A search was conducted in the premises of Mr. Walia and various documents were found. From the documents it appears that among several cars, one was Mercedes Benz GL 320 Cdi car, the bill of entry for which had been filed in the name of Mr. Tarun Kumar, containing an invoice dated 17th March 2008 of M/s. A.K. International (IE) Limited. The price disclosed in the invoice was US$47,700. A concessional customs duty was paid by declaring it to be a new car.;