The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission seek comments by Dec. 1 on proposed revisions to the Antitrust Guidelines for International Enforcement and Cooperation. The new draft guidelines (here) “restructure the previous guidelines in order to make the guidelines more useful and accessible by focusing on the questions of greatest significance to users,” DOJ said. “The proposed revisions also describe the current practices and methods of analysis the Agencies employ when determining whether to initiate and how to conduct investigations of, or enforcement actions against, conduct with an international dimension,” it said, including import and export transactions. The current version of the guidelines (here) was published in 1995.

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Oct. 24-30:

A married couple in Queens, New York, were charged Oct. 27 with importing counterfeit goods from China into the U.S. "with the intent to distribute and sell the counterfeit products to retailers in New York City and elsewhere," ICE said in a news release (here). The complaint alleged that Daye Dong and Hongyu Chen stored the imported counterfeit goods in "two warehouses with the intent to transfer the goods to retailers in New York City, including a Manhattan retail store operated by Chen, and elsewhere," ICE said. "After a search was conducted of the pair’s residence, warehouses, and retail store, authorities found more than 30,000 pieces of counterfeit goods, including handbags and wallets, for various luxury and designer brands." ICE's Homeland Security Investigations is still reviewing the evidence collected, the agency said.

A judge for the U.S. District Court in Scranton, Pennsylvania, sentenced two men for their involvement in a conspiracy to illegally export goods to Syria, the Department of Justice said (here). U.S. District Court Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Malachy Mannion on Oct. 25 sentenced Ahmad Feras Diri of London to 37 months in prison, a $45,698 penalty and a $100 fine, DOJ said. London Metropolitan Police arrested Diri in March 2013, and extradited him to the U.S. on the charges against him. Mannion also sentenced Harold Rinko, 74, of Hallstead, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 13, to 12 months of home confinement, a $45,698 penalty, a $2,600 fine and a two-year term of supervised release. A third man accused in the conspiracy, Syrian citizen Moawea Deri, remains a fugitive, DOJ said. Rinko operated an export business in Hallstead, and conspired with Diri to export portable detectors for chemical warfare agents from the U.S. through Jordan, the United Arab Emirates or the United Kingdom, into Syria, DOJ said. The men used false invoices undervaluing and mislabeling the purchased goods and listed false information about buyers’ identities and locations. Homeland Security Investigations within ICE and the Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement investigated the case.

Court of International Trade Senior Judge Donald Pogue died on Oct. 26, the CIT confirmed. Pogue, chief judge from 2010 to 2014, was 69. He was appointed to the court in 1995 by President Bill Clinton and served on Connecticut's Superior Court before then, according to his CIT bio (here). "On behalf of [the Customs and International Trade Bar Association], I express our condolences to Judge Pogue’s family and colleagues," said Lawrence Friedman, president of CITBA. "He was an asset to the Court of International Trade and to the customs and trade bar. He was uniformly respected by all practitioners who appeared before him," Friedman said. "Personally, I always enjoyed my interactions with Judge Pogue both in the courtroom and at events outside the court. He always struck me as genuinely concerned about the parties and the lawyers that appeared before him and worked with him." CIT had no immediate comment.

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Oct. 17-23:

The Bureau of Industry and Security is denying the export privileges of a Florida man who in 2013 was convicted for exporting two LTN-72 inertial navigation units to Turkey without obtaining necessary Commerce Department authorization, BIS announced (here). Junaid Peerani’s export privileges are denied until five years after his Aug. 14, 2013, conviction by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. BIS also ordered a revocation of all licenses in which Peerani had an interest at the time of his conviction.

Already-liquidated entries aren’t eligible for refunds after an antidumping or countervailing duty order is revoked, even if the entries came after the effective date of revocation, the Court of International Trade said in a decision issued Oct. 25 (here). The court denied Thyssenkrupp’s attempts to reclaim antidumping duties it paid on corrosion resistant steel products it imported from Germany, finding CBP’s liquidation of the entries was not protestable, and that Commerce’s liquidation instructions complied with AD/CV duty laws that mandate sunset review revocations apply only to future entries, not retroactively.

A Florida tobacco importer faces criminal charges and possible prison time for allegedly evading $13 million in excise taxes, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida on Oct. 21 (here). Gitano Pierre Bryant Jr. miscalculated the amount of excise taxes he owed on large cigars he imported, despite repeated warnings from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) and a previous conviction, and falsified invoices to further lower his tax payments, the attorney’s office said.

Cargo vans exported to Canada and retrofitted as motorhomes before being imported into the U.S. do not qualify for duty-free treatment as goods returned after alteration or repair, the Court of International Trade said in a decision issued Oct. 18 (here). The transformation from a cargo van into a motorhome changed the character of the finished product so much that the importer, Pleasure-Way Industries, can no longer claim that it is the same article that it exported for tariff classification purposes, CIT said.