Forfeited cars’ value $100,000

Press, 12 October 1979, Page 26

Forfeited cars’ value $100,000

NZPA Brisbane A Gold Coast businessman intended to take two luxury Mercedes sedans back to New Zealand, but he forfeited both cars, together valued at more than $lOO,OOO, to the Crown when he appeared I in the Magistrate’s Court | at Brisbane. Before the Court was Herbert Cecil Shaw, aged 58,. of Currumbin, who W’as also fined $3OO after pleading not guilty to four charges of having made false statements on import documents and of having evaded payment of customs duty on the vehicles. The Court was told Shaw brought the cars into Australia under a scheme known as the triptych system. It w’as told that the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland was the state operative under the scheme, which allow’ed visitors to Australia to import motor-vehicles without payment of customs duty or sales tax. Motor-vehicles brought into Australia under the scheme had to be exportc 1 within a set period, usually 12 months. Applicants for the j scheme had to have a permanent overseas address. Shaw had lived at Currumbin since 1973. Shaw told the Court that, on the advice of an R.A.C.Q. employee, Robert Donald Campbell Bruce, he had put his son’s

address in Christchurch on the application form. Bruce denied Shaw had told him that he had lived at Currumbin for some years. Shaw told the Court he intended to take both Mercedes back to New Zealand with him.' He was not aware that there was a 171 per cent duty on vehicles not under the triptych system, brought into New Zealand. The Magistrate found Shaw guilty on all four charges and fined him $75 on each, plus costs.