1) The issue isn’t at all about “sawed Indian ebony logs with paperwork identified as finger boards”. It’s about fingerboard blanks, and whether or not they can be considered a product involving enough native labor to satisfy the export laws of India. It’s also about a wrong (but closely related) tariff code being entered on only SOME of the paperwork.did you read the affidavit all the way through? it pretty clearly says that given the significance of the problems found w/ the gibson imports, that the gov is seeking permission to search gibson's properties for evidence. one of the reasons the affidavit says the gov is so suspicious is because the kind of mistakes they found w/ the shipments don't appear to be mistakes, but rather look intentional. for example, the affidavit metnions a shipment of wood that would have otherwise been illegal to export were falsely describe and falsely coded to look like a shipment of wood that could be legally exported.
still sound to me like the doj is doing its job. also, the doj has said that it's not interested in yours or anyone elses guitars. they're only interested in corps that are intentionally breaking the law. or at least that's my reading of it. the illegal logging business has more to do w/ the 2009 raid, i think. and that wood has to do w/ madagascar, not india.
2) What’s an acceptable product? As the agent himself pointed out in Gibson’s search warrant affidavit, there’s a distinction between a “fingerboard” (an unfretted wood blank of rough size) and a “fretboard” (which is slotted and contains fret wire). If so, then those are two different products, and as such it’s possible to have a fingerboard blank as distinguished from simply “sawn wood” – adding slots, wires, inlays, shaping and binding would make that blank into a related but different product. In the same way, we offer flat shell blanks, veneers, Abalam® sheets, and strips made to specifications according to what their intended use is: as materials which may or may not be remanufactured/incorporated into other types of finished products such as inlays, guitars, jewelry, furniture, fishing lures, and so on. Similarly, plywood is imported as a product unto itself without it needing to be in another and more final form such as furniture, boxes, or whatever.
To insist, as the U.S. agencies seem to be doing, that materials from India must be in their ultimate retail form is insane, especially in light of the Indian government not interpreting their own regs that way or insisting on such nonsense. Here lies much of the anger surrounding this controversy
What's confusing is that in the search warrant affidavit Agent Rayfield goes to some length in distinguishing an unslotted "fretboard" from a slotted and fretted "fingerboard" (Para. 13) as found on a finished instrument, and later (para. 22) distinguishes HS 9209.92.00 as "finished parts of musical instruments".
He also mentions (Para. 13) that "importers and exporters have sometimes referred to the sawn pieces of wood intended to be manufactured into fretboards as 'fingerboards' or 'fingerboard blanks'". But he contends that even though these may be informally referred to as "fingerboards" they're actually no more than "sawn wood" and being over 6mm in thickness are "sawn logs" (Para. 19 and 25) and thus a prohibited HS 4407 item (Para. 12).
So at issue is whether or not "fingerboards" exceeding 6mm are "finished parts for musical instruments" as would be allowed under HS 9209.92.00. If not, the argument is that they're "sawn logs" and illegal. We all know including the DOJ they will ultimately be used for Musical instruments!!
Tony
