The main legal point established in the judgment is that the authority must consider and address relevant submissions and contentions raised by the parties, and failure to do so may render the order legally unsustainable.

ORDER :

Ashutosh Shastri, J.

1. With the request and consent of learned advocates appearing for the respective parties, these first appeals are taken up for final disposal. Since the issue involved in these three appeals are identical and as such these appeals are taken up conjointly by treating the First Appeal No.1258 of 2018 as a lead matter and the facts are taken from it for the sake of convenience.

2. Heard learned advocate Mr. Paritosh R. Gupta for the appellant and learned advocate Mr. Siddharth Dave appearing for Mr. Devang Vyas, learned Additional Solicitor General of India appearing for the respondent authorities.

3. By way of this First Appeal under Section 35 of Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, the appellant has prayed for setting aside the orders dated 09.11.2017 and 29.01.2016 passed by the Appellate Tribunal, Foreign Exchange Management Act in Appeal No.FPA-FE-03/AHD/2013.

4. The background of the present first appeal is that the appellant is a merchant exporter. At the relevant point of time, somewhere in the year-2001 was holding the status of star trading house and was engaged in the business of import and export of various products including fabrics and readymade garments to and from several European countries, Asian countries and United States of America. In the said course of the business, the representative of the appellant came in contact with one supplier of readymade garments in United Arab Emirates namely Prestige General Trading, which was essentially dealing in the readymade garments made in China, Vietnam, Thailand etc. and in furtherance of the said deliberation with the company, the appellant placed an order on the same supplier based in United Arab Emirates after making necessary inquiry of the said supplier and established letter of credit in favour of the supplier through its banker State of Saurashtra in October-2001.

4.1 The said supplier shipped a container load of ladies nightwear containing 90864 pieces under the invoice dated 13.10.2001 and with regard to the said goods, the bill of entry for warehousing along with the shipping bills for export on 02.11.2001 with a declaration on the bill of entries itself that goods were meant for export in terms of Paragraph 11.7 of EXIM Policy 1994-2002 read with Section 69 of Customs Act, 1962. The said bill of entry filed by the appellant was also assessed and forwarded to the docks for examination. However, the customs docks forwarded the documents to SIIB with certain remarks and the said goods imported claimed to have been examined on 22.11.2001, for which, the appellant was not aware and the investigation was carried out by the Customs Department leading to the issuance of show cause notice, which came to be adjudicated vide order dated 13.12.2005.

4.2 It is the case of the appellant that the appeal challenging the said order dated 13.12.2005 came to be filed before the appellant in Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal, which was decided vide final order No.41334 of 2017 on 26.07.2017 and the same came to be decided against the appellant. The appellant, then, submitted miscellaneous civil application for review of the aforesaid order, stated to be pending before the Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal.

4.3 It is the case of the appellant that the Enforcement Director without making proper investigation in this regard lodged a complaint on 21.06.2011 under Section 16(3) of the Act, which was lodged, wherein the facts were based on the aforesaid order of the Commissioner of Customs, dated 30.12.2005 and a reference was made under Section 10(6) of the Act as well as other relevant provisions. The said complaint alleging that the appellant had contravened the provisions of Section 10(6) of the Act read with Regulation 6(1) of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (Realization, Repatriation and Surrender of Foreign Exchange Regulation, 2000) read with Section 42 of the Act. It was stated, thereafter, that the appellant liabl