The Customs Administration has entangled itself in a web of its own regulations, which is why the tender for granting concessions to freight forwarding companies for customs operations at border crossings has been stagnant for two years. The Director of the Customs Administration and Assistant Minister of Finance Hrvoje Čović will have to consider improving the regulations as they have caused chaos from which it will be difficult to emerge with everyone’s satisfaction. It is precisely due to dissatisfaction with this situation that a pact of freight forwarders against the company Trast has been formed, which they claim is favored by Customs. Trast, on the other hand, claims they are clean and point out the irregularities of others.
United Against Trast
Eight freight forwarders led by Primacošped claim that the biggest problem is that Trast has been in pre-bankruptcy proceedings since 2014 and that this company does not meet the conditions for performing customs operations at border crossings. Namely, Customs approved Trast to increase the reference amount of the joint guarantee from 12 million kuna to 62 million kuna the day before the tender for border crossings was opened. Additionally, the director of Primacošpeda, Petar Šimić, claims that Customs approved this amount for Trast without the obligation to provide a bank guarantee, while the president of Trast’s Management Board, Miljan Begović, claims they have a bank guarantee but does not specify its amount. In any case, it is about the fact that when a truck with goods enters Croatia with a final destination in another EU member state, the freight forwarder guarantees with their reference amount that the goods will be unloaded at the destination and not somewhere in Croatia. Trast, by increasing the reference amount, received an additional 300 points in the tender for border crossings, which increased its chances since it would only receive 50 additional points for 12 million kuna. This was enabled despite its poor financial situation, claims the opposing side, but also due to the disputed regulation from April 2014, which further specifies the tender criteria that are not mentioned in the Law on Conditions for Performing Representation in Customs Procedures. Specifically, the scoring of the reference amount is not mentioned, which means that the subordinate regulation establishes criteria that are not mentioned in the Law.
