Customs charges denied

Press, 2 April 1980, Page 4

Customs charges denied

Office- equipment and sta-i tionery purchased from a! Japanese company for $5500; would have retailed in New Zealand for $29,384, Judge B. A. Palmer was told in the District Court yesterday. William Brandt and Company, Ltd, importers, and Derek William Wade Brandt, a company director, have de- ; nied a series of charges brought under the Customs : Act and the Trade and In? dustry Act alleging tire eva? ;sion of customs duty, the; ifalse declaration of the;

■lvalue and quantity of goods i imported and other related lioffences. ■ Mr D. J. L. Saunders is s appearing for the Customs • Department, and Mr A. A. P. Willy for the defendant company and Derek Brandt. I Pleas of not guilty have , been entered to all charges. ■. The defence will open its /case today. Opening his case Mr -iSaunders said that William 'Brandt and Company. Ltd, /was a private company; /which in recent years, had , been operated by Derek Wil-i liam Wade Brandt, who was! a director and shareholder in! what was originally his father's company. rhe defendant company! (faced 24 charges under the Customs Act relating . to eight shipments of imported Stationery and office equipment from Carl Manufacturing, Ltd, of Japan. The company also faced two charges, alleging a breach of the Trade and Industry Act by breaching its import licence. ; Derek Brandt-had denied seven charges that, ? as a director of the company, he made false declarations as .to the value and quantity of goods brought into the country by the production of false documents to the Cus-| toms Department. Thei amount of customs duty alleged to have been evaded was $2300. All the charges arose as the result of an investigation by David John Blakemore, of the Customs Department. Early in 1978 Mr Blakemore spoke to Derek Brandt at the company's premises and read correspondence relating to the importation of

si products from another fori'eign company. As a result he executed a search warsi rant and seized a number of sidocuments. An examination of- the indicated that Jover the previous two years tithe company had been inIvolved in the alteration of s!the value, of goods which it had imported. All the goods ■ were subject to duty. . i Evidence would show . that ,jin each shipment the price “was reduced so that a gfeather quantity of goods .than “was authorised, under the lisicence were imported and the t'duty paid on those goods i .was less than it should have been. ? When interviewed Mr ■ Brandt . freely acknowledged i that the price of goods imported from the Carl Manu- . factoring Company was al- . tered for the sole purpose of import licensing and claimed ; that it had/not been done to evade customs duty. ,>?' That claim was not accepted by the Customs Department because the company had extensively imported goods over the last 20 years and would! have been fully aware that by al- ' tering the price it would be evading duty.