Bomb of Surcharges
The Ministry of Environment of Korea levied a fine of combined 70.3 billion won (US$63 million) on local sales subsidiaries of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche for forging the documents required for the government certification.
The three foreign auto importers argued that they had no attention to violate the regulations and the documentations were just errors occurred in the procedure for getting the certificates. The ministry is, however, even considering reporting them to the prosecutor’s office.
The ministry unveiled on November 9 that it had already notified the three car importers of the administrative measures such as certificate cancellation (prohibition of sales) and imposition of surcharge.
After taking a hearing procedure, the ministry plans to cancel the certification for 28 models of BMW that fabricated test certificates, and impose 57.9 billion won (US$52.1 million) of surcharge on the German car importer. The ministry also impose 2.9 billion won (US$2.6 million), 7.8 billion won (US$7.0 million) and 1.7 billion won (US$1.5 million) on 11 models of BMW, 19 models of Mercedes-Benz and five models of Porsche each, which were sold without certificates of parts change in the documentations, through the same measures. As a result, BMW should pay 60.8 billion won (US$54.7 million) as the penalty.
Under the current law, three percent of the sales is applied as surcharge in case of certificate fabrication and 1.5% applied in case of omitting the change of parts in certificate documentation. The ceiling of surcharges is one billion won (US$900,000) if the cars sold before July 27 last year, but 10 billion won (US$9.0 million) when they sold after the next day.
The number of BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars subject to fines were 81,483 and 8,246, respectively, while that of Porsche was 787. No measures or charges will be taken on or applied to the cars that have already been sold or those who own them.