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Brown fights to retrieve tractor

21st November 1996, Page 123
21st November 1996
Page 123
Page 123, 21st November 1996 — Brown fights to retrieve tractor
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Keywords : Excise, Taxation, Customs

by Lee Kimber • A quirk of British customs law is forcing an innocent owner-driver to fight to get his tractive unit back from Customs & Excise, even though drugs were found on his trailer rather than the truck itself.

Kent operator Clive Brown was freed earlier this month when he was cleared of drugs charges after spending eight months in Canterbury prison. But now he could have to pay hundreds of pounds to get his truck back and may have to recover it in pieces, according to his solicitor Laurence Waitt. "They seize anything that is to do with drugs," he says. "It is very draconian."

People who fight the Customs' right to forfeit their vehicles rarely win, he adds, forcing them to seek restoration. This is the procedure Brown hopes to use to win back his cab, but customs often demands several hundred pounds in "restoration penalties" and forces owners to accept vehicles in whatever condition customs has left them.

"We're waiting to hear how much he'll have to pay and when he can have it," Waitt says. "It'll take perhaps three to four weeks."

Customs says it usually returns vehicles in circumstances like Brown's and that it is looking into his case. Restoration can be refused but this is generally reserved for vehicles adapted to carry contraband.

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