The Appeal Court of Odessa Region has confirmed the first instance court decision upon the dispute between the Client and the Southern Customs Office

On the 26^th of September 2014 the Appeal Court of Odessa Region left unchanged the Odessa Malinovskiy District Court decision upon closing the proceeding on bringing the Forwarder to administrative responsibility due to wrong classification of goods in the process of declaring thereof.

Let us remind the matter stated in the news dd. the 18^th of August 2014:

On the 30^th of May 2014 the Southern Customs Office of the Ministry of Incomes detained a set of lanterns carried from China to Transnistria via the Odessa Commercial Sea Port.

These goods were declared by the employees of the Ukrainian Transport & Forwarding Company on the grounds of documents submitted by the Client.

There were no violations detected during three inspections but the Southern Customs initiated the merchandising expertise in order to determine the code of goods under the Ukrainian Customs Commodity Classification Codes for Foreign Trade. Having obtained the results of expertise, the Customs considered that the lanterns were electrical shockers. Therefore it made a Protocol on violation of customs rules under Article 472 of the Customs Code of Ukraine, which provides confiscation of goods and fine in the amount of 100% of the cost thereof.

Lawyers from Interlegal managed to prove absence of elements of the violation (subjective aspect) in the declarant’s actions.

According to the Odessa Malinovskiy District Court decision dd. the 7^th of August 2014, the case upon bringing the declarant to administrative responsibility was closed and the Southern Customs Office was entitled to return the seized goods.

Therefore the Odessa Region Appeal Court dd. the 26^th of September 2014 confirmed illegal actions of the Southern Customs upon causeless detention of goods for more than two months.

Alexey Remeslo, the senior lawyer, and Sergey Sushko, the lawyer, represented the Client’s interests.