The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Machinery spares seized

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 12, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Machinery spares seized

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Officials of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Chennai seized used excavators, bulldozers, motor-graders, fork lifts and related machinery spares and unearthed evasion of Customs duty to the tune of Rs 2 crore in the last three months. According an release the machines were imported at Tiruchi, Tuticorin and Chennai in Tamil Nadu and Secunderabad in Andhra Pradesh. The importers had so far paid Rs 1 crore towards duty during the investigation itself, the release said.

Investigations revealed that the importers evaded Customs duty in the import of used excavators and other construction machinery from Japan, Thailand and Singapore by wrongly declaring the prices to the Customs.

Investigations further revealed that the traders/contractors purchased the machinery in auction and from various trading firms, either directly or through their overseas representatives and sent minimum reserve price amount of about 40 per cent of the actual purchase value through hawala operators.

They have not shown this amount in the final price and on completion of auction, the differential amount was not paid through actual banking channels and then it was shown as actual price of the used machinery for which the Customs duty was paid.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu