A federal jury Thursday convicted a Puerto Rican man for trafficking in counterfeit pharmaceuticals, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Luis Angel Garcia Torres, 41, of Patillas, Puerto Rico, used the Internet to import from China and distribute counterfeit Viagra and Cialis and offered to sell the Viagra and Cialis tablets, ICE said. The retail cost at the time for Viagra and Cialis ranged from $15 to about $20 per pill, said ICE, but Garcia Torres was selling them for $2 each after purchasing the tablets for $0.45 each. Garcia Torres faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a $2 million fine, ICE said.

The Court of International Trade said it will hear a challenge of the “acquisition clause” of the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Act of 2000 (CDSOA, commonly known as the Byrd Amendment), which says a company must not have been acquired by a company or business that is related to a company that opposed the investigation in order to qualify for CDSOA disbursement.

A seventh executive of Control Components Inc. pleaded guilty to bribery charges involving the sale of valves to Greece, the Justice Department said. It said David Edmonds, the former vice president-worldwide customer service at California-based CCI, pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) before U.S. District Judge James Selna in Santa Ana, Calif., to a one-count superseding information charging him with making a corrupt payment to a foreign government official in Greece. According to court documents, CCI designed and manufactured service control valves for use in the nuclear, oil and gas, and power generation industries worldwide. At sentencing, Edmonds, 59, faces up to 15 months in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 19, 2012.

American Seafoods Co. and Pacific Longline Co., both of Seattle, agreed to phase out the use of ozone depleting refrigerants, implement a comprehensive leak detection and repair program aboard a number of their vessels and pay a penalty to resolve federal Clean Air Act violations, including the illegal import of ozone-depleting refrigerants, the Environmental Protection Agency said. The consent decree was lodged at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle. The EPA said that, between 2006 and 2009, American Seafoods and Pacific Longline imported and used 70,000 kg of R-22 refrigerant without holding valid allowances.

The Court of International Trade sustained the final results of the International Trade Administration’s 2007-08 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on floor-standing, metal-top ironing tables and certain parts thereof (A-570-888), after Home Products International, which had in April been granted a motion for reconsideration of an aspect of the final results that had resulted in a remand to the ITA, withdrew its challenge. CIT ordered all entries enjoined by this action to be liquidated.

A temporary injunction enjoining liquidation of entries of ball bearings from Germany produced by Schaeffler KG or Schaeffler Technologies GmbH & Co. KG and entered for consumption from May 1, 2010 to April 30, 2011 was ordered by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The temporary injunction was ordered in response to a motion for injunction, pending appeal, in an ongoing challenge of the International Trade Commission’s injury finding in a sunset review of several ball bearings orders.

In a case involving U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s tariff classification, and denial of eligibility for NAFTA duty-free entry, of plaintiff’s candied peanuts imported from Mexico in 2007, the Court of International Trade dismissed Rogelio Salazar Cavazos’ claims regarding CBP’s denial of his requested NAFTA importation duty refund claims. CIT said it had no jurisdiction over the matter because Salazar never filed a protest with CBP over its determination of the goods’ NAFTA eligibility. Salazar’s HTS classification protest did not likewise cover NAFTA eligibility, it said, and he was eligible to file a second protest, contrary to his arguments. However, Salazar’s claims challenging CBP’s tariff classification of the goods fall within its jurisdiction, CIT said, because he filed a valid protest that CBP denied, and so did not dismiss those claims.

In a reversal of its previous ruling on the issue, the Court of International Trade agreed to consider the all others rate of 137.65% from the preliminary countervailing duty determination of aluminum extrusions from China (C-570-968), in light of the fact that, although the preliminary determination is not a final agency decision, it carries force because cash deposits are collected from the time of the preliminary determination in antidumping and countervailing duty investigations.

The Court of International Trade sustained the International Trade Administration’s second remand redetermination of the final results of its new shipper review of the antidumping duty order on fresh garlic from China (A-570-831) with respect to Chinese plaintiff Jinxiang Heija Co. Having been ordered to explain the greater weight given to Indian price quotes used to determine normal value that the ITA had found, as opposed to the Indian price quotes found by Heija, the ITA, under protest, afforded all of the price quotes equal weight by using a simple average to determine normal value. Heija’s AD rate fell from 15.37% to zero as a result of the recalculation. Heija did not challenge the ITA’s redetermination, and the CIT found the challenges of U.S. defendant-intervenors lacked merit, and sustained the ITA’s redetermination.

A $6.3 million settlement was reached Monday to resolve claims that companies misclassified auto parts manufactured in China and imported to the U.S. to evade $2.5 million in duties, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Six companies from the U.S. and China, as well as two named individuals, allegedly violated the False Claims Act by knowingly misclassifying auto manifolds to obtain a duty rate of zero, ICE said, while charging its customers the correct duty of 2.5%, and retaining as "profit" the duty that should have been paid to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Between June 2004 and June 2011, the U.S. alleged that the company evaded $2,549,000 worth of duties on 706 entries involving manifolds valued at $102 million.