Agency may crack down on several similar frauds which amount to Rs25 crore.
With the busting of world’s fourth largest steel producer, Korea’s steel giant Posco, for evading anti dumping duty (ADD), the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) is said to have also exposed a country wide trend that may have swindled more than Rs25crore since the imposition of ADD in 2010.
On Wednesday DNA revealed how Posco was caught evading duty after their consignments were seized at Kandla port. The company officials who had flocked DRI office in Ahmedabad agreed to their fault. The DRI had detected Rs1 crore duty evasion based on the seized consignments worth Rs8.5 crore.
DRI sources said that the Korean giant is one of the major suppliers of Cold Rolled Coils in India mainly used in the automobile industry. They said that import of coils violating ADD is likely to cross Rs25 crore, which was found on the basis of imports made by Posco- Hyundai, Sharda Motors among others at Kandla port, Pune and Chennai.
The investigators had found that Posco was actually importing 409 l grade of stainless steal which falls under ADD but on paper they had shown the product as falling under the category of EN 1.4512 which is exempted from ADD.
Besides this, source said that the company was hiding their import of coils by using another modus operandi. According to the law steel coils having width ranging from 600 mm to 1,250 mm fall under ADD. But Posco was caught importing their coils by increasing the dimension by one mm to five mm.
“Posco’s coils were having width from 1,250 mm to 1,255 mm. About one month back, after various complaints from the country’s industry representatives the government increased the range by 30 mm more, which means coils having width of 1,280 mm would fall under ADD. However, Posco was not following it,” sources said.
In fact, sources said the width was increased after complaints that companies were evading ADD by slightly increasing the width of their products. On Thursday the company officials who were initially reluctant to buy DRI officials’ findings, agreed to pay the duty.
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