1. The appellant, a licensed Customs Broker, is aggrieved by the Order-in-Original dated September 25, 20201 passed by the Commissioner of Customs, Chennai holding that the appellant had contravened Regulations 10(b), 10(d), 10(k), 10(n) and 13(12) of the Customs Brokers Licensing Regulations, 20182 and revoking the appellant's licence under Regulation 14 read with Regulation 17. The security deposit furnished by the appellant was also forfeited and a penalty of Rs. 50,000/- was also imposed upon the appellant under Regulation 18 of CBLR, 2018.
2. The factual matrix which leads up to the issue of impugned order are as follows:-
a) The appellant was licensed as Customs Broker by the Commissioner of Customs, Tuticorin but it also operated in Chennai and Mumbai Commissionerates under Form C procedure. Customs Brokers licensed by one Customs House can operate in other Customs Houses under this procedure. The appellant filed 33 shipping bills in the name of "M/s. Sunrise Enterprises, Ghaziabad" to export "Ratchering spanner set and water saving aerator foam flow" declaring abnormally high price allegedly to claim excessive IGST refund. The CIU of Mumbai Customs detained the goods, recorded the statements of Shri Harichandra Pandurang Kadam, G-card holder of the appellant on June 4, 2019, June 13, 2019 and December 23, 2019. They also recorded the statement of Shri A. Prabhu, partner of appellant on December 23, 2019.
b) The G-card holder, Shri Kadam, also held the power of attorney to act on behalf of the appellant in Mumbai. In his statement, he admitted that they had not obtained Know Your Customer3 documents from the exporter. Instead, one Shri Inder Prakash Kohli of M/s. Prakash International who approached them had provided PAN, Aadhar, GSTIN and bank details of the exporter M/s. Sunrise Enterprises, Ghaziabad. After the data pertaining to the shipping bills was fed into the system, the checklist was provided to Shri Kohli to verify and not to the exporter. Shri Kohli confirmed the checklists and the shipping bills were filed.
c) The carting of goods i.e., bringing the goods to the Customs export shed, which is usually done by the staff of Customs Broker and for which Shri Chandu More was specifically appointed by the appellant had not done the carting in this case. Instead, the carting was also done in this case by Shri Inder Prakash Kohli who was not even authorized by the appellant to do such work.
d) A market survey was conducted by the CIU, Mumbai Zone along with Shri Kohli on June 8, 2019 and it was found that the market price of "Ratchering spanner set" was Rs. 250/- whereas in the shipping bills the declared price was Rs. 5,125/-. Similarly, the price per piece of 'water saving aerator foam flow' was Rs. 40/- only in market whereas the declared price was Rs. 337/- per piece. Thus, the appellant filed of shipping bills in the name of an exporter without even contacting the exporter and without verifying their KYC documents but by simply accepting the documents provided by Mr. Kohli who was neither the exporter nor an employee of Customs Broker nor the Customs Broker himself. The prices of the export goods were grossly overvalued with the intention to claim excessive IGST refund.
e) When questioned, Shri A Prabhu, partner of the appellant firm said that the KYC requirements in respect of importers and exporters from Mumbai was dealt with only by their employee Shri More, and he had no idea about M/s. Sunrise Enterprises, the exporter in this case. He further stated that on knowing about the malpractices in Mumbai, they have terminated all the operations in Mumbai and asked the staff to resign immediately.
3. An inquiry officer was appointed by the Commissioner in the matter under Regulation 17(1) of CBLR, 2018 who, after conducting the inquiry found as follows: