Customs, Excise and Gold Tribunal - Mumbai
Rose Travels vs Commissioner Of Customs (Acc) on 6 November, 2006
ORDER
Jyoti Balasundaram, Vice-President
1. We have heard both sides on the applications for waiver of pre-deposit of penalty of Rs. 50,000/- imposed on each of the applicants under the provisions of Section 114(i) of the Customs Act, 1962 on the ground that they abetted smuggling of foreign currency out of India by one Shri Essack Farid Shaikh who was intercepted on 21-9-1997 at Sahar Airport, Mumbai, and from whom travellers cheques issued by both the applicants herein who are Full-fledged Money Changers, were recovered. The Commissioner's finding in respect of imposition of penalty on M/s. Wall Street Finance Ltd. is to be found in Paragraph 2.19 of the impugned order, while the finding on penalty upon M/s. Rose Travels is found in Paragraph 2.20 of the impugned order. The Commissioner has found that out of four persons in whose names TCs worth US$ 10,500 were issued by Rose Travels (which was found on the person of Essack Farid Shaikh), two could not be traced as their addresses were found to be fictitious. The third person had expired and the enquiries conducted with the fourth person had revealed that he had not purchased any TCs and the signatures endorsed on the TCs were not his signatures. As regards Wall Street Finance Ltd., the Commissioner has accepted the statement of one Shri Javed Ahmed Latif Shaikh to whom TCs of US$ 500 were purported to have been issued, that he had not purchased any TCs from this FFMC, by relying upon the discrepancy in the signature of Javed Ahmed Shaikh as per his statement recorded on 18-5-1998 and the signature in the cash memo purchased by Wall Street Finance Ltd., in support of their contention that they have issued TCs to Javed Ahmed Shaikh. We have gone through the records and find that prima facie the applicants are correct in their submission that what is to be compared for the purpose of holding that the Money Changers did not even verify as to whether the person who is purchasing the TCs is the person holding the passport which was produced before the FFMC for the purpose of verification, are the same is by tallying the signatures on the passport with that appearing in the cash memo, and we find that prima facie the signatures of four passengers to whom. Rose Travels state that they had issued the TCs, tally with the signatures in their passports, photocopies of which are before us. As regards Wall Street Finance Ltd., no comparison has been attempted between the signature on the cash memo of Javed Ahmed and the signature in his passport. Prima facie the fact that there is a difference between his signature on his statement and his signature on the cash memo is not sufficient to hold that Wall Street Finance Ltd. did not verify whether the person to whom they were issuing the TCs was the person who held a valid passport and the passenger who had applied before them for issue of the foreign currency.
2. In this view of the matter, we hold that a prima facie case for waiver of pre-deposit of penalty has been made out by both the applicants and hence waive pre-deposit of the penalty and stay recovery thereof pending these appeals.
(pronounced in Court)