India CIB investigates alleged illegal import of Imidacloprid technical

Recently India Central Insecticides Board and Registration Commit(CIB) has investigated the companies which have been complained by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) for alleged illegal import of technical imidacloprid. The companies included i) M/s Crystal Crop Protection Pvt. Ltd, ii) M/s Insecticides India Ltd. iii) M/s Tropical Agrosystem Pvt. Ltd，which failed to get the sources endorsements completed in their Certificates of Registration issued by Secretariate of CIB&RC when importing the products.

In case of M/s Crystal Phosphates Ltd, the consignments of the company were under detention of Customs authorities and no proceedings against them were pending before DRI. The company has applied for endorsement of change of the name of source, which was under active consideration of the Registration Committee (RC). Therefore, the Committee issued a stern warning to M/s Crystal Phosphates Ltd to be careful about the change in the name of the source in China and get it endorsed as soon as it changed, prior to that no import should be made.

In case of M/s Insecticides India Ltd, the company has had a heavy penalty amounting to Rs. 22.00 lakh (Rs. 12.00 lakh already imposed and another Rs. 10.00 lakh is to be paid on release of their consignment), which is much more than prescribed under the Insecticides Act, 1968. In view of the action against them by DRI, they were unable to obtain the letter of consent from the source for obtaining endorsement for change in the name of the source. Therefore, they will be able to apply for endorsement on clearance of the case by DRI. The Committee decided to permit clearance subject to verification of the quality of the imported consignment by drawing a sample from the consignment by a team to be nominated by Secretary (CIB&RC) and tested at CIL before giving clearance, if the same has not been done by the Customs/DRI. An affidavit to the effect that whatever was stated in their reply and the supporting documents was true and genuine may be obtained. A stern warning may be issued to this registrant that in the event of any information being found wrong/false in any material in particular, their Certificate of Registration shall be liable to be cancelled.

In the case of M/s Tropical Agrosystems, the registrant has stated that they had already applied for endorsement for change in name of the approved source. Even the commercial invoice of this consignment bears the changed name, i.e. M/s Suzhou Worldbest Agro-biochemical Co. Ltd, China within brackets after Wuxian Pesticides Factory, which implies that even the source had not hidden about the change of the name. The Committee noted that the registrant has submitted a reply, wherein inter alia with other submissions, it is stated that the matter is fixed for hearing on 07.06.2013 before Customs/DRI. Therefore, the Committee decided to seek status/outcome of their case from the Customs/DRI before considering the case further in the next Meeting of RC