The chief financial officer of a Georgia-based paper supply company was arraigned Oct. 23 on charges of conspiracy to import paper products from China with fraudulent invoices and bills of lading, and to avoid customs duties on such products, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Jennifer Chen, 44, was indicted Oct. 17 by a federal grand jury charging her, her ex-husband Chi Cheng "Curtis" Gung, 45, and their Georgia-based paper company Apego, with conspiracy and 12 counts of importing notebooks and filler paper from China, which are subject to the antidumping duty order on lined paper products from China, using false documents.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers filed a joint challenge of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s conflict minerals rule with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Oct. 19. The final rule, published Sept. 12, requires some companies using tantalum, tin, gold or tungsten to disclose use of the minerals and possibly file a detailed report. The Chamber and NAM also challenged the underlying provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act. The appeal provided no details on the challenge, but simply requested that the conflict minerals rule be modified or set aside.
Wilton Industries appealed a Court of International Trade judgment that found in favor of CBP’s classification of its “Stampin Up!” decorative hole punches for use in scrap booking. Wilton had argued that they are classifiable as cutting machines under Harmonized Tariff Schedule Chapter 84 and should have entered duty free, but CIT said CBP correctly classified them as perforating punches under HTS Chapter 82, dutiable at 3.3 percent. CIT also threw out an agreement between Wilton and CBP that the judgment would only apply to 16 models of Wilton hole punches, instead applying the ruling to all 39 models at issue.
The Court of International Trade affirmed the International Trade Administration’s recalculation of Chinese exporter Shantou Red Garden Foodstuff’s antidumping duty rate in the investigation of certain frozen warmwater shrimp from China (A-570-893). CIT had remanded Red Garden’s 27.89 percent AD rate for recalculation in January. In its remand redetermination, the ITA assigned Red Garden an AD rate of 7.2 percent. CIT objected to the ITA’s use of a single Indian company’s data to calculate the surrogate value for Red Garden’s shrimp inputs in its remand redetermination, despite the availability of country-wide Ecuadorian data. But Red Garden did not object, so CIT affirmed.
A North Carolina man pleaded guilty Oct. 22 in U.S. District Court in Charlotte to trafficking in counterfeit airbags, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Igor Borodin, 27, also pleaded guilty to delivering and causing to be delivered hazardous material, that being airbags, by air commerce in violation of rules and regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Transportation.
A Haitian national pleaded guilty Oct. 18 to entry into a seaport under false pretenses, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Benedick Dextra obtained fraudulent documents under the name of Benedick Louis. Dextra then used those illegal documents to obtain a New York driver’s license and a Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC). This allowed him access to secure areas, such as container terminals in Port Elizabeth, N.J., ICE said.
The Court of International Trade affirmed an International Trade Commission negative injury determination for finished heat sinks in the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations of aluminum extrusions from China (A-570-967). The ITC found injury to U.S. industry by imports of other types of aluminum extrusions, so the International Trade Administration issued AD and CV duty orders. These orders excluded finished heat sinks from the scope, however.
Mohammed Reza “Ray” Hajian of Tampa, Fla. was sentenced Oct. 18 to four years in federal prison, as well as a $10 million fine and one year of supervised release following the end of his prison term, for conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Iranian Transaction Regulations, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Hajian pleaded guilty July 11, along with three of his companies: RH International, Nexiant, and P & P Computers.
A former American Airlines baggage handler was sentenced to life in prison Oct. 16 for his leadership of an international drug trafficking organization, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Victor Bourne led an organization that smuggled narcotics from the Caribbean into the United States through John F. Kennedy International Airport, ICE said. Bourne was convicted in October 2011.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement arrested a Florida man in connection with a scheme to illegally import dinosaur fossils into the U.S., including a nearly complete Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton from Mongolia, and a Microraptor skeleton from China. The arrest follows an earlier civil suit seeking forfeiture of the Tyrannosaurus skeleton.