Defending The Vulnerable in Customs Law 

by Vusi Ngcobo

Mageja Customs Consulting was recently called upon to intervene in a case that demonstrated once again how those that do not fully understand the customs law can be abused and made to pay huge amounts of money they should not pay in the first place. 

A clearing agent in the Northern Cape recently received a letter of intention to impose a penalty for alleged contraventions of customs law in the Customs and Excise Act. 

The client was accused of having contravened Sections 38(1), 39(1) and Rule 39.08 in that he removed, received, took, delivered or dealt with Importer/Exporter goods without such goods being declared. This was said to be an offence in terms of Section 84(1) of the Customs and Excise Act. They were therefore penalised an amount of R9449.00 

As mentioned above, this was a clearing agent. Their client had requested them to clear goods for export from SA to Namibia. What happened is that the exporter of the goods only handed 2 invoices to the agent to declare the cargo, but upon inspection of the vehicle, additional cargo and 2 additional invoices which had not been declared to Customs were found.  

Now the question becomes, whose fault was it that there was cargo and invoices that were not declared as per customs law? 

In my mind it became very clear from the onset that the agent was not at fault here. He declared what he was requested to declare. He did not know about the extra cargo and the invoices because he was never informed about them by the declarant. 

What also became interesting to me was the fact that the quoted sections alleging the contraventions all relate to imported cargo. Why would Customs want to penalize someone using imports related sections of the law when the goods were being exported? 

The issue here is that if this client did not know about Mageja Customs Consulting and our ability to defend the defenceless, they could have panicked and paid over to SARS the amount of R9449.00 which was not legally due to SARS. I remember in my days at SARS that we used to have a slogan that said, “collect revenue that is legally due to SARS”. This amount was not legally due to SARS. 

Fortunately, we successfully intervened on behalf of the client and won the matter on their appeal. A withdrawal of letter of intent correspondence was received from SARS and we save this agent almost R10k which, by the way was going to be paid by the staff member who had processed the declaration on behalf of the exporter. 

To make sure that you are legally being penalized by SARS, talk to us. We have extensive experience in fighting off unjust and illegal penalties being imposed on innocent people. We have saved a lot of companies hundreds of thousands of rands. With us you can never go wrong and can feel confident in navigating the complex world of customs law!