Washington state-based auto broker BidBuy Auctions settled a customs fraud case with DOJ, agreeing to pay $430,000, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington announced. The qui tam case saw a former BidBuy employee allege the auto broker lied to CBP about the value of imported vehicles to pay less in duties. As a result of the settlement, the former employee-turned-whistleblower will get 23%, or $98,900, of the $430,000 payment.
The U.S. settled a civil suit against global trading and investment firm Samsung C&T America -- a subsidiary of Korean conglomerate Samsung C&T Corp. -- over charges SCTA violated the False Claims Act by misclassifying footwear imports to avoid paying customs duties, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced. The importer will pay $1 million to the U.S. and make admissions over its conduct, specifically that it misclassified its imports on entry documents filed with CBP and underpaid custom duties, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
CBP is no longer requiring emails from importers to activate approved Section 232 exclusions, and will now directly process approved exclusions based on weekly lists provided by the Commerce Department, CBP said in a CSMS message Feb. 7. A list of approved exclusions will be posted every Friday, and the product exclusion ID must be on that list before the customs broker or filer submits the exclusion ID on entry documentation, CBP said.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control updated its Russian price cap guidance last week to include information on the recently imposed cap on Russian petroleum products. The measure -- which took effect 12:01 a.m. EST on Feb. 5 -- sets a $45 per barrel cap for petroleum products that trade at a discount to crude, such as naphtha and waste oils, and a $100 per barrel cap on products that trade at a premium to crude, such as motor fuel.
Kochava violates consumer protection laws by acquiring consumers' precise geolocation data and selling it “in a format that allows entities to track the consumers' movements to and from sensitive locations,” alleged King County, Washington, plaintiff Cindy Murphy in a class action Wednesday (docket 2:23-cv-00058) in U.S. District Court for Idaho. Her complaint bears strong similarities to the FTC’s Aug. 29 lawsuit in which the agency seeks a permanent injunction enjoining Kochava from acquiring the data (see 2212050061).
CBP is extending until April 14 its deadline for customs brokers to submit lists of all current employees in the ACE portal, the agency said in a CSMS message. The deadline was previously Feb. 17. The extension will “give brokers additional time to comply with the requirements and allow for implementation of technical fixes in ACE,” CBP said. Brokers are required to report all current employees, including those not engaged in customs business, to CBP under the recent customs modernization final rule.
CBP will give customs brokers nearly two more months to comply with a new requirement to submit lists of all current employees to CBP via the ACE Portal, the agency said in a CSMS message. Brokers will now have until April 14 to comply with the requirement from the recent customs broker modernization final rule (see 2210170071). The deadline had previously been Feb. 17 (see 2212190056).
Correction: The deadline for brokers to have a complete list of current employees on file with CBP is Feb. 17 (see 2301260059).
CBP deployed new capabilities for updating customs broker employee lists to its modernized ACE Portal on Feb. 2, CBP said in a CSMS message. New functionalities include an individual licensed broker indicator for broker employees, as well as the capability to “bulk upload” up to 200 employees at a time, instead of the previous 50. A “pending” status will be displayed to show the bulk upload is in progress. A new column on the broker employee list will now display an employee end date, and the portal will now check for duplicate Social Security numbers when creating an employee record, preventing the creation of new records with duplicate SSNs, CBP said. Brokers are now required to report all employees by Feb. 17 (see 2212190056).
A field will be available in the ACE Automated Broker Interface for customs brokers and other filers to transmit the Chinese postal code once the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Region Alert postal code requirement takes effect March 18, CBP’s Katie Woodson said during the agency’s bi-weekly ACE call. For China-origin entries after March 18, where the Chinese manufacturer ID is transmitted but the name and address of the manufacturer does not include the postal code, brokers and filers “will have the ability to input [that] information, and they can then input the postal code field that's missing,” Woodson said.