Liquidações a posteriori de direitos aduaneiros fundamentadas nos relatórios do OLAF

: implicações jurídicas e económicas

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the legal and economic impact of the use of OLAF’s reports by national customs authorities to justify the post-clearance assessment of customs duties. Firstly, our main objective will be to find out what the legal value of these reports is, as well as the legitimacy of their use. OLAF is a European body whose mission is to investigate possible cases of fraud, corruption and other offences that could result in a loss of revenue owed to the European Union, namely through the evasion of customs duties, or at least their full value. In this sense, either through reporting channels or through the checks it carries out, when fraud is suspected, OLAF sets up investigations which, once finalised, result in documents with recommendations. Those recommendations are sent to the national customs authorities, so that they can carry out, if they so wish, internal investigations, which deal with specific economic operators and aim to ascertain the need to subsequently settle customs duties that have not been collected. Reports are defined as any document, in any form, issued by OLAF after it has completed its investigations. Secondly, the focus given to the issue of undervaluation, a subject with relevant current jurisprudential developments at the level of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Thisis justified by the greater prevalence of using the OLAF reports in this context to substantiate the post-clearance assessment of customs duties. In the context of this thesis, the approach followed is based on the European legislation in force at the time of writing, without neglecting previous legislation, used as a term of comparison, since a large part of European case law is still based on the rules of the Community Customs Code. In conclusion, the results are essentially twofold: (i) to determine the legal value of this report and to understand the actions of the national customs authorities, and (ii) to assess whether economic operators can identify the associated risks and take the necessary action to prevent the possible assessment of duties after the goods have been cleared through customs.

Date of Award	29 Jan 2025
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Tânia Carvalhais Pereira (Supervisor)