Wrong Office of Exit Code × 12 Declarations

Initial Situation

An automotive parts exporter regularly shipped goods to buyers in North America. The goods went by sea through Rotterdam - Europe's largest container port.

The customs agent filed export declarations in the Polish AES system. The problem was that for 3 months, every declaration contained the wrong office of exit code. Instead of the code corresponding to the Dutch customs office, the declarations listed a code pointing to a customs office in a different EU member state.

As a result, 12 export declarations were routed to a customs office in whose jurisdiction the goods had never appeared. That office could not confirm the export because it had no data on these containers. All 12 MRNs remained open.

Complication

An incorrect office of exit code is a serious systemic issue. The export message from the Polish AES is sent to the customs system of the country indicated in the declaration. If the code is wrong, the message ends up in the system of a country through which the goods never actually passed. The customs office in that country finds no confirmation in its port system and cannot close the MRN.

At the same time, the Dutch customs office - through which the goods actually exited - had no knowledge of these declarations because the messages had never been routed to it. The goods left the port normally, but without any link to the MRN numbers.

Our Action

The case required correction at the export declaration level, followed by registration in the correct port system. Here is how we proceeded:

1. Audit of all 12 declarations - we verified each MRN, confirmed the actual port of exit (Rotterdam), and identified that the same incorrect office code was the root cause in all cases.
2. Coordination of office of exit code corrections - working with the client's customs agent, we carried out corrections to the export declarations, changing the office of exit code to the correct one - corresponding to the Dutch customs office responsible for Rotterdam.
3. Rerouting of customs messages - after the code corrections, the export messages were forwarded to the correct Dutch customs office.
4. Registration in the correct port system - for each of the 12 containers, we registered the export in the Dutch port system with the correct transport data.
5. Verification of one exception - during analysis, it emerged that one of the 12 containers had never left the EU. The goods had been returned to Poland (a diversion). In this case, MRN closure was not possible - the export declaration had to be invalidated.

Result

11 out of 12 MRNs were closed after the office of exit codes were corrected and the exports were registered in the correct port system. The client received export confirmation of export confirmations for all 11 containers that had actually left the EU.

The twelfth MRN was invalidated because the analysis revealed that the goods had been returned to Poland (diversion - the goods did not leave the EU customs territory). In this case, the client's customs agent filed a request to invalidate the export declaration, and the company corrected its VAT return for that transaction.