A jury awarded $8 million dollars in damages against a Customs Broker found to have engaged in a conspiracy to import fake Coach® handbags and wallets in the case of Coach v. Celco Customs Services and Celine Wang, Ct. No. 11-cv-10787 (Central District of California). On June 24, 2009, CBP seized a shipment of “catalogs” which actually contained 22,040 handbags and 10,300 wallets. Entry was attempted utilizing a fraudulent Power of Attorney (“POA”) allegedly issued by a biochemical company. Coach...

The United States Court of International Trade recently denied a request to deduct certain freight charges that the importer argued were included in the transaction value of the goods as a result of the vendors’ late shipment. In Cutter & Buck, Inc. v. United States, Slip Op. 13-45 (April 3, 2013), the court primarily found that because the terms of the purchase order did not specifically provide for a change in negotiated price and a change in the terms of...

On 15 February 2013, the Central Bank of Ireland (the “Central Bank”) published updated versions of its UCITS (undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities) Notices and Guidance Notes. The updated documents were produced to reflect the European Securities Markets Authority’s (ESMA) Guidelines on ETFs (exchange traded funds) and other UCITS issues (the “ESMA Guidelines”) as issued on 18 December 2012 and effective from 18 February 2013. The Central Bank’s Application Forms will also be amended to reflect the ESMA...

The Central Bank of Ireland’s (the “Central Bank”) Online Reporting System (“ONR System”) is now fully operational and Regulatory Returns (the “Returns”) for Irish authorised collective investment schemes (“CIS”) are now to be filed through it. This follows the issuance in May 2012 of Consultation Paper 59, which outlined proposed changes to the regulatory reporting requirements of CIS. Subsequently, the Central Bank issued a letter to the Board of Directors of CIS in relation to the appointment of a System Administrator...

On 8 March 2013, the Central Bank of Ireland issued statistics for Q4 2012 on investment funds resident in Ireland. The total number of shares or units in issue by the end of Q4 2012 increased by 4.4% to €932 billion. This increase was due to revaluations of €11.5 billion and net new subscriptions of €28 billion. Irish investment funds were recorded as holding €171 billion sovereign bonds and €253.4 billion of corporate bonds at the end of Q4. There was...

Pepper Hamilton LLP is pleased to announce that Larry Byrne and Ruth Harlow have joined the firm's White Collar Litigation & Investigations Practice Group as partners in the New York office. Both were formerly with Linklaters. This is the latest in a series of moves to expand the firm's already substantial corporate investigations, white collar advocacy and enforcement practice in key markets. In September 2012, Pepper was joined by the attorneys of Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan, LLP, and the firm...

The volume of digitally recorded information has increased exponentially in recent years and has made the term Big Data omnipresent. Purchasing books online, chatting with friends on social networks, and downloading videos on mobile phones, are just a few of the activities that contributed to a total of 1.8 zettabytes (1 trillion gigabytes) of stored data sets in 2011. By 2015, this amount is predicted to grow to 7.9 zettabytes. Big Data is defined by four characteristics: data volume, variety,...

On March 21, 2013, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) published in the Customs Record its “Proposed Test Method for the Administration of Additional U.S. Note 5 to Chapter 64, HTSUS, concerning the Classification of Footwear with Textile Material on the Outer Sole.”   This notice will officially appear as a General Notice and Request for Comments in Customs Bulletin and Decisions, vol. 47, no. 4 on March 27, 2013.  Written comments are due on or before May 28, 2013.   Impact...