Litigation with Altai Customs

A Double Victory in a Protracted Legal Dispute with the Altai Customs Office.
In 2022, the client (a major manufacturer of household chemicals and cosmetics in the Altai Krai) contacted us for assistance in resolving a dispute with the customs authority. 
Earlier, the Altai Customs Office had independently reclassified the client's goods from Group 8424 of the EAEU TN VED to Group 9616 of the EAEU TN VED, resulting in an increase in the customs duty rate from 0% to 15% and additional customs duties totaling over a million rubles. 
The client turned to the Usconsult team for assistance in resolving this situation.
The dispute had lasted nearly three years. 

 During this time, a colossal amount of work in terms of volume, quality and complexity was carried out:
⁃ several expert opinions were prepared (including the opinion of experts from the Altai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as well as the opinion of a linguistic expert on the incorrectness of the translation of the description of group 9616 into Russian from English),
⁃ a forensic examination was carried out concerning the clarification of the characteristics, design features and functional purpose of the disputed batch of goods,
⁃ an appeal was prepared to one of the highest bodies of the EAEU (the Eurasian Economic Commission) and a decision was received on classification according to code 8424,
⁃ the international harmonized system of description and coding of goods (in the image and likeness of which the commodity nomenclature of foreign economic activity of the EAEU was prepared) and the practice of its application were analyzed, 
⁃ the opinion of the Vladivostok customs office on the practice of classifying disputed goods was requested,
⁃ the judicial practice of other districts of Russia on similar cases was analyzed,
⁃ The practice of classifying similar goods by customs authorities of the Republic of Belarus (a member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) unified customs space) was presented,
and a number of other important actions were taken in the course of the legal proceedings in courts of five instances across three constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

Since 2022, this dispute has passed through five court levels and two rounds of review, but ultimately, on September 2, 2025, the Seventh Arbitration Court of Appeal ruled to uphold the decision of the Arbitration Court of Altai Krai recognizing the client's claims as justified and the customs actions as illegal.
The legal team of Usconsult, as well as a representative of the Altai customs office, participated in the court hearing.
The client's interests were represented by Usconsult Managing Partner E.A. Bondarenko and general practice attorney M.V. Litskas (in person at the Seventh Arbitration Court of Appeal in Tomsk).

The court hearing was brief but intense: after hearing the latest and previously repeated arguments from the Altai Customs office, Usconsult's lawyers rebutted their position on all points of the appeal.
Following the hearing of the parties' arguments and a brief review of the case materials (approximately ten large volumes), the court retired briefly to its deliberation room. When it returned, it ruled to uphold the contested decision of the first instance court (adopted as part of a new hearing on the merits due to procedural violations committed in the initial judgment) unchanged and dismiss the appeal.

The Altai Customs office formally retains the right to file a cassation appeal within the prescribed time limit, but there is no doubt that the cassation court will again consider the arguments of Usconsult's lawyers rather than those of their opponents, especially given the fact that this court had previously overturned the first instance decision and was the first to side with our client.