Katiran Lee, 39, an Indonesian national, was indicted for allegedly importing counterfeit auto accessories from China and selling more than $3 million worth to U.S. consumers, the Justice Department said. He was charged in federal court with two counts of trafficking in counterfeit goods, four counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In the indictment, the government is seeking forfeiture of computers, programming equipment and thousands of blank keys and trademarked automotive emblems recovered during a search of Lee's home on Feb. 22, 2012, and the forfeiture of property totaling up to $600,000.
A Taiwanese national was sentenced to two years in prison Oct. 24 for helping to obtain and export military sensitive parts for Iran, in violation of the Iranian trade embargo, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The indictment charged Susan Yip, 35, a citizen of Taiwan, along with Mehrdad Foomanie (aka Frank Foomanie) of Iran, and Merdad Ansari of the United Arab Emirates, with conspiracy to violate the Iranian Transaction Regulations, conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Yip had pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge July 20, admitting that from Oct. 9, 2007 to June 15, 2011, she acted as a broker and conduit for Foomanie to buy items in the United States and have them unlawfully shipped to Iran.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement seized two more antique statues that it traced back to alleged smuggler Subhash Kapoor, it said. The statues, which are estimated to be worth $1.7 million, were seized from a Manhattan hotel Oct. 23. The hotel was allegedly lent the statues by Art of the Past gallery, which is owned by Kapoor. In July, an arrest warrant for Kapoor was issued by the Manhattan Criminal Court on charges he possessed stolen property.
A California man was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for trafficking in more than 30,000 DVDs bearing the counterfeit trademarks of Dolby Laboratory Licensing Corp., a company responsible for sound quality in many theatrical movies and DVD releases, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Jackie Weisheng Chen, 48, will begin serving his prison term by Jan. 4, 2013.
A CBP supervisory officer was arrested Oct. 25 on charges of accepting bribes to allow others, including his ex-wife, to avoid duties on goods imported into the U.S. by falsely declaring the goods had been transported in-bond to another port of entry for export. Sam Herbert Allen of Diamond Bar, Calif., was indicted by a federal grand jury at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on one count of conspiracy, one count of accepting bribes, and three counts of making false statements to DHS investigators.
Several Vietnamese exporters appealed the Court of International Trade’s affirmance of the use of zeroing methodology in the 2008-09 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen warmwater shrimp from Vietnam (A-552-802). In its Aug. 2 ruling in Grobest & I-Mei Industrial v. U.S., CIT remanded the ITA’s decision not to individually review Grobest. The International Trade Administration subsequently initiated a review of Grobest on Oct. 17 in response to the court order. But CIT also affirmed the ITA’s use of zeroing in the administrative review, in light of its February opinion in Union Steel v. U.S. that the ITA adequately explained its practice of zeroing in administrative reviews but not investigations. The Vietnamese appellants are only challenging the zeroing aspect of the Aug. 2 ruling.
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.