The legal "splinter" here is in the wording of Note 2 to art. 16.2 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation: it explicitly states voluntary notification after the release of goods. In practice, this creates a paradox: if the declarant noticed an error before release, quickly submitted the CTD and actually helped the customs to receive correct information and payments, formally he does not fall under the "privilege" because he did not wait for release. It is this distortion that is called the "lame technique of the law."
In the case in question, the error was typical for "technical" but expensive ones: when filling out the DT, the contract currency was indicated as CNY instead of USD, although the dollar appeared in the documents. Then an employee of the company discovered the discrepancy himself and promptly submitted a CDT. But even such an amendment did not change the fact that, due to the initial information, payments turned out to be underestimated by almost 1 million rubles - and this is already a zone of increased attention of customs and the classic risk of qualification as an unreliable declaration.
The key turn is how the court assessed the moment of correction. The important date was not the "before/after release" date, but before the moment when the violation was detected by customs. That is, the court actually "leveled" the stimulating logic of the norm: it encourages not waiting for release, but self-identification and voluntary elimination before the controller himself found the problem.
When filling out the declaration, an employee of the Company mistakenly indicated the contract currency not in USD, as indicated in the submitted documents, but in CNY.
Later, a specialist of the Company independently discovered the specified error, in connection with which the declarant immediately formed and submitted a CDT.
As a result of a technical error, the amount of customs payments was underestimated by almost 1 million rubles...
In this case, the declarant's actions aimed at eliminating self-identified violations related to non-declaration or false declaration, both before and after the release of the goods, indicate good faith and the intention to comply with the established declaration procedure.
The main thing in the situation under consideration is not when the declarant discovered violations during the declaration - before the release of the goods or after the release of the goods, but that he independently identified the violations and himself contacted the customs authority to eliminate them, that is, until the violations were detected by the customs authority.
As the court of first instance correctly pointed out, there is no evidence in the case file that the customs authority found signs indicating the presence of an administrative offense event prior to the company's request for amendments and (or) additions to the information provided in the DT.
What this means for the practice of foreign economic activity:
- KDT is not an "indulgence", but a proof of good faith. It works best when there is a fix: the error has been found by you, the correction initiative is yours, customs has not yet "highlighted" the violation with a request / inspection / examination.
- Timing traces become crucial. The internal log (who discovered when, why), the memo /ticket, the time of the CDT formation, correspondence with the broker — all this turns into evidence that the correction is voluntary, and not a reaction to control.
- It is necessary to separately control the “money fields” of the DT. The currency of the contract, the exchange rate, the method of determining the customs value, the values that affect payments — this is where the "technical" error most quickly turns into a composition.
The courts are gradually bringing law enforcement to common sense — to encourage those who correct violations themselves and on time, even if it happened before graduation. But it is risky to rely only on the "reasonableness of the court": it is better to establish an early DT control procedure and a "if you find a mistake, fix it immediately and correct it."
