Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A High Court judge has ruled that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) act­ed with­in the law when it chal­lenged the de­clared val­ue of im­port­ed goods and re­quired de­posits dur­ing gen­uine val­u­a­tion dis­putes.

In dis­miss­ing a claim by Ul­ti­mate Sup­ple­ments Ltd and Che How­ell En­ter­pris­es Ltd seek­ing leave to file for ju­di­cial re­view against the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Ex­cise, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad al­so is­sued a pow­er­ful mes­sage that Trinidad and To­ba­go must not al­low cor­rup­tion to be­come nor­malised.

The com­pa­nies chal­lenged the CED’s de­ci­sion to ques­tion the de­clared val­ues of im­port­ed health and nu­tri­tion­al prod­ucts, im­pose val­u­a­tion de­posits as a con­di­tion for re­leas­ing ship­ments, and de­lay clear­ance of their goods, which they said harmed their busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

They fur­ther al­leged that Cus­toms of­fi­cers were en­gaged in cor­rupt prac­tices. They named of­fi­cers who al­leged­ly claimed their goods would be re­leased if they dis­con­tin­ued their claim.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that the CED act­ed law­ful­ly in ques­tion­ing the de­clared val­ue of im­port­ed goods and re­quir­ing de­posits pend­ing the res­o­lu­tion of gen­uine val­u­a­tion dis­putes.

The Court found that Cus­toms is not re­quired to ac­cept in­voic­es at face val­ue where ob­jec­tive­ly rea­son­able grounds for sus­pi­cion ex­ist and that, in this case, the con­cerns raised were suf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“They are en­ti­tled and in­deed oblig­ed to un­der­take rea­son­able en­quiries in­to the ac­cu­ra­cy of stat­ed val­ues where ob­jec­tive­ly jus­ti­fi­able grounds ex­ist,” the judge said.

Ad­dress­ing the cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said the Court had care­ful­ly ex­am­ined the ev­i­dence but found no co­gent or ad­mis­si­ble ev­i­dence to sup­port the se­ri­ous claims made against the named Cus­toms of­fi­cers.

In ad­di­tion to rul­ing on the Cus­toms dis­pute, the Court used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a na­tion­al call against cor­rup­tion, stress­ing that pub­lic pow­er is a pub­lic trust.

The judg­ment un­der­scored that cor­rup­tion is per­pet­u­at­ed not on­ly by of­fi­cials who abuse pub­lic of­fice but al­so by those who at­tempt to buy that abuse.

“The pub­lic of­fi­cial who so­lic­its or ac­cepts a bribe be­trays the trust re­posed in pub­lic of­fice, but the per­son who of­fers or pays that bribe is not an in­no­cent par­tic­i­pant. Each sus­tains the oth­er.”

Call­ing for ze­ro tol­er­ance of cor­rup­tion, the judge stressed that “se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions de­mand se­ri­ous proof” and that pub­lic of­fi­cials can­not be con­demned on sus­pi­cion or in­nu­en­do alone.

The Court called on Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­ject the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of cor­rup­tion and em­brace trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty as non-ne­go­tiable stan­dards of both pub­lic ser­vice and cit­i­zen­ship.

The judge al­so dis­missed the in­tend­ed claimants’ claim to seek con­sti­tu­tion­al re­lief. Le­gal costs are to be as­sessed.

The claimants were rep­re­sent­ed by Justin Junkere, in­struct­ed by Mick­ael Ram­bert, while Tr­isha Ram­lo­gan, Ce­line Moo­sai, Kha­dine Matthew and Herchells Bark­er rep­re­sent­ed the de­fen­dant.