The Court of International Trade again sent back down the 2009-10 antidumping duty administrative review on frozen warmwater shrimp from Vietnam due to concerns over the wage rate Commerce selected to value labor involved in Camau’s production process. The review has already been remanded twice (see 12111602 and 13080201), with Commerce refusing to budge from its use of Bangladeshi wage rates to determine the wages Camau would have paid its workers if it was in a market economy country.
Vahid Hosseini pleaded guilty in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to felony charges related to exporting good to Iran, said the Justice Department. Hosseini pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulation and a separate count of money laundering, facing a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and fines totaling $250,000 when he is sentenced on June 6, said DOJ. Hosseini bought more than $250,000 worth of goods from U.S. companies he then repackaged and shipped to Iran, said the agency. The goods "included tachometers, power supply instruments, high-temperature probes, ammonia test tubes, valves and machinery parts, all of which are used in a variety of commercial applications, including power plants," it said.
Esterline Technologies Corporation is ordered to pay $20 million in civil penalties as part of a State Department settlement over hundreds of alleged violations of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAC), said State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) and other government agencies in recent days. Esterline engaged in unauthorized exports and imports of defense articles, violations of licenses and approvals, exports of defense articles that exceeded quantity and value authorized, inappropriate use of exemptions and flawed Automated Export System filing, State said (here).
Sea Star Lines and Horizon Lines will pay a total of $3.4 million to settle with the Justice Department over allegations of price fixing in violation of the False Claims Act, the DOJ said in a press release. Sea Star will pay $1.9 million and Horizon will pay $1.5 million, it said. "The government alleged that former executives of the defendant ocean shippers used personal email accounts to communicate confidential bidding information, thereby enabling each of the shippers to know the transportation rates that its competitor intended to submit to federal agencies for specific routes," the agency said. "This information allowed the shippers to allocate specific routes between themselves at predetermined rates," affecting several government contracts. The companies have already pleaded guilty in a related criminal suit (see 11111822 and 11022522). Former Sea Star executive William Stallings, who worked as a whistleblower in the case, will receive about $512,719 of the funds, DOJ said.
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will take another look at whether corporate officers are liable for negligent misstatements on entry documentation, granting on March 5 the government’s request for a rehearing en banc on the issue. The Appeals Court will revisit its decision in Trek Leather, where it found Harish Shadadpuri was not liable for his company’s undervaluation of entries of men’s suits (see 13073025).
The Federal Maritime Commission will tack on an additional $625,000 on top of the $9.8 million that shipping company Compañía Sud Americana de Vapores has agreed to pay to settle charges of price fixing on roll-on, roll-off (ro-ro) cargo shipping services. The FMC penalty will resolve allegations that CSAV violated the Shipping Act by acting in concert with other ocean common carriers under unfiled agreements.
The Court of International Trade on March 3 went back to the drawing board to implement a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, affirming the Commerce Department’s original antidumping duty rate for an exporter of pasta from Italy (A-475-818) after the trade court had thrice remanded over the last five years. Commerce had calculated an AD duty rate of 18.18% for Atar in the 2004-05 administrative review on pasta from Italy, but CIT took issue with the rate in a series of decisions until finally in 2012 affirming an AD rate for Atar of 11.76% (see 12080206). But a year later, the Appeals Court reversed the remands, finding Commerce had in fact correctly calculated Atar’s rate in the final results (see 13091128). CIT’s decision now affirms the final results rate of 18.18% in light of the reversal from CAFC. Cash deposit rates for Atar will remain at zero, however, because of a Section 129 decision that took effect July 8, 2012.
The Court of International Trade again sent back the results of the 2007-08 antidumping duty administrative review on certain corrosion-resistant carbon steel flat products from South Korea (A-580-816). CIT had in 2012 remanded the AD rates for South Korean exporters of the product in response to a challenge from Union Steel, Dongbu, and Hyundai HYSCO, as well as domestic producer U.S. Steel (see 12053008). Commerce came back with lower AD rates for the three South Korean exporters, but CIT on March 4 again found fault and remanded.
A New York federal court on Feb. 25 found an importer liable for a leak of a corrosive chemical aboard two ships while crossing the Pacific. Carrier APL spent over $5 million cleaning up the 2006 spill aboard two of its ships and at two container terminals at the Port of Los Angeles. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found importer Kemira Water Solutions jointly and severally liable, in part because the company specified the wrong type of packaging in its purchasing agreement.
Commerce can choose not to apply an alternative antidumping duty calculation method even if it finds targeted dumping, said the Court of International Trade on Feb. 27 as it sustained the 2010-11 administrative review on ball bearings from France, Germany and Italy. During the review, Commerce had gone a step beyond its normal test for determining if targeted dumping occurred by running an additional test to see if the targeted dumping accounted for a significant portion of overall sales. The agency decided it did not. In response to a challenge from the Timken Company, CIT ruled that Commerce is allowed to run the additional test and decide not to change its calculation method, because the underlying law only says the agency “may” modify its calculations if it finds targeted dumping.