A company’s failure to declare 100 boxes of brandy in a consignment of wine was a genuine mistake, a magistrate ruled yesterday.

Magistrate Marseann Farrugia ordered that the consignment be released and that the importer pays the difference in stamp duty.

She was handing down judgment in the case which Vincent Cachia, director at Patrick Cellars Limited, instituted against the Commissioner of Inland Revenue following the seizure of the consignment in December 2011.

The consignment arrived at the Malta Freeport and the documents showed there were 2,111 boxes of wines. However, during an inspection, officers found 100 boxes of brandy which had not been declared. It turned out that, while the documents were being processed by the company’s shipping agents, Carmelo Caruana Company Limited, an employee did not realise that part of the consignment was brandy and listed the whole consignment as wine.

The brandy was seized and the Commissioner of Inland Revenue initiated proceedings against the importers for their failure to declare the true contents of the consignment – the tax due on this spirit is higher than that on wine.

But the magistrate concluded that the company representatives did not have the intention to evade tax or fool customs officers and that the mistake had been genuine.