A group of related apparel importers will pay $10 million to settle charges that they falsified entry documentation to avoid paying import duties, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District New York on April 9. Siouni and Zar Corp. and Dana Kay admitted to underreporting the dutiable value on invoices provided to CBP for imports of women’s apparel by using a second, unreported invoice for part of the purchase price. The complaint said the false invoices resulted in $3 million per year in unpaid duties.
CBP should revise its regulations for customs brokers to expand the definition of "corporate compliance activity," the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) said in comments recently filed with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). RILA's comments, filed in response to a DHS request for public input on regulatory changes it should consider (see 14022621), focused on a wide range of CBP regulations that the association said deserve review. The retailers were one of only a few commenters that raised customs issues with DHS.
LAS VEGAS -- The question of how to accredit continuing education classes for customs brokers continues to bedevil CBP, but the agency is starting to make some progress toward a proposed rule, said Heather Sykes, CBP branch chief-Broker Management, at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America annual conference April 9. CBP has started work on its economic impact analysis on continuing education requirements, a necessary step before drafting a proposed rule. Rather than issue all of its "role of the broker" changes at once, CBP is now considering breaking the changes out into several "packages" of proposed regulations. One package would be the continuing education proposed rule, which Sykes very tentatively said could come in 2015. Others will address importer bona fides and broker employee reporting requirements.
LAS VEGAS -- A formal explanation as to how the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) understands the customs broker exemptions within the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) is in the works, though there has not been indication when exactly it will come, said Ed Greenberg, a lawyer for the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA). Greenberg and others discussed the law on a panel during the NCBFAA conference April 8. The issue has been the source of significant discussion among brokers and it was clear at the NCBFAA conference that the question continues to be a major concern within the industry.
LAS VEGAS -- The Federal Maritime Commission is looking at softening changes to its regulations on Ocean Transport Intermediaries (OTIs), said FMC Chairman Mario Cordero in remarks at the National Customs Broker & Freight Forwarder Association annual conference. A May 2013 request for comments had prompted industry to decry the FMC's regulatory changes as too burdensome. Cordero said FMC staff is currently considering ways to make any new regulations more “business-friendly,” although he wouldn't say what specific changes were in the pipeline.
A customs broker is off the hook for alleged violations of the federal pesticide regulations, after an administrative law judge on March 6 dismissed an Environmental Protection Agency civil penalty proceeding. EPA had accused Mara Shipping of failing to file required notices of arrival on several shipments of pesticides. It originally requested a $172,500 penalty, according to Mara. But Mara argued customs brokers aren’t responsible for filing notices of arrival. The fight paid off, as EPA withdrew its complaint in late February. EPA did not respond for comment on why it dropped the case.
LAS VEGAS -- CBP plans to roll out an electronic single transaction bond system (e-STB) in January and the agency is still on track to meet that goal, said Bruce Ingalls, director of the Revenue Divisions in the CBP Office of Administration. Ingalls and other panelists discussed plans for bonds April 7 at the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America annual conference. Once the agency gets e-STB going, it will very quickly move to a wider scale e-bond system and "that will bring the continuous universe into the electronic environment," he said. CBP is still doing some work to identify the "impact points" of the planned changes, he said.
NEWPORT, R.I. -- A notice announcing the long-discussed "Trusted Trader" pilot is now facing additional legal reviews, which continue to delay a Federal Register notice that was expected to be out last month (see 14031203), said Elena Ryan, CBP director of Centers of Excellence and Expertise (CEEs) Transition Team, The pilot would combine Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) with Importer Self-Assessment (ISA). "We were hoping to have that out by now but we did need to go through some additional legal reviews," she said at a Coalition of New England Companies for Trade conference on April 1. "A lot of the things you have been hearing about now for a while are all still largely intact," including a multiphase approach, she said.
CBP is expected to begin to test a program that would allow importers of branded merchandise to send information to the agency through the Document Image System (DIS), said Karen Kenney of Liberty International, who is current co-chair of the Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations (COAC) Trade Enforcement and Revenue Collection Subcommittee. Kenney, who is also chairman of the Coalition of New England Companies for Trade (CONECT) discussed COAC's ongoing work during a CONECT conference in Newport, R.I. on April 1. While not definite, a Federal Notice for the pilot may be out in early summer, she said.
Mexico's Diario Oficial of April 1 lists notices from the Secretary of the Economy and Secretary of Finance as follows: