...yes, even
you:
Millions of pounds seized from tobacco smugglers over the past eight years will have to be returned because Customs officers unlawfully confiscated their assets, The Independent has learnt.
Whoopsie!
Revenue and Customs officials are re-examining about 4,000 cases where confiscation orders were granted to seize the assets of people involved in the illicit trade in cigarettes. The agencies face having to pay it all back, plus legal costs and compensation, after failing to notice a change in the law in 2001 which severely restricted who could be targeted for such smuggling.
When you are a law enforcement agency, how can you possibly
fail to notice a change in the law? Customs' excuse seems to be 'Hey! We weren't the only ones caught out!' as if that somehow makes it better...
The Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office said in a statement yesterday: "Whilst the error is deeply regrettable we were not alone in making it: the same error has been made in academic texts and by practitioners at all levels."
Sheesh...
7 comments:
Eh? Why the hell are there restrictions in place for prosecuting those who smuggle?!?! Surely smuggling is smuggling?
It seems, from the report, that they've been applying it a little too widely and clobbering everyone:
"Instead of everyone involved in the crime – whether smuggling tobacco into the UK, transporting it to vendors or selling it – being required to pay tax, the change meant only the masterminds and those who smuggled it would have to pay the duty. "
XX "Instead of everyone involved in the crime – whether smuggling tobacco into the UK, transporting it to vendors or selling it – being required to pay tax, the change meant only the masterminds and those who smuggled it would have to pay the duty. " XX
So. Basically, that SHOULD mean that the corner shop can tell the tax to shove it up their arse, because it is only B.A.T/Philip Morris, etc, that are liable for tax, as they are the "masterminds" bringing tobbacco in to make ciggarettes. Everyone else in the chain after that are not, according to this law, liable.
I should have been a lawyer!
When you are a law enforcement agency, how can you possibly fail to notice a change in the law?
Actually I can understand this part. There have been so many new laws, and so many adjustments to existing laws in the last decade I don't think that there can be anyone in the county who really knows what the law is these days.
Eh? Why the hell are there restrictions in place for prosecuting those who smuggle?!?! Surely smuggling is smuggling?
The problem was with Booze-cruisers and the vagueness of the law. I think that the relevant EU law says that you don't have to pay duty on items meant for 'personal consumption' that you take across EU borders but doesn't specify any particular limit, so it was entirely up to the customs officer to decide what was being brought in for personal use, and what was being smuggled for sale. Day-trippers were bringing things back quite legaly were having their vehicles seized, I guess the fuss from that was what got the law changed in 2001.
I think that "the fuss" was when P&O took Customs & Excise (as it was then) to court for "harrassing their customers". C&E had been illegally applying their own "reasonable limits" to personal imports of booze and fags from the EU and coming down like the proverbial ton of bricks on anyone they decided was carrying too much - confiscating the goods and often the vehicles used to transport them.
These "reasonable" limits were sensibly declared distinctly unreasonable by the High Court.
Brilliant. As Pogo says, they went way over the top and used to confiscate people's cars just for the sake of a few hundred fags or something.
This is one of the few things where I say "Hooray for the EU!".
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