Former PepsiCo employee alleges company evaded import duties
-
- January
- 8
A former PepsiCo Inc. employee alleges in a lawsuit that the Purchase-based soft drink giant defrauded the U.S. government out of more than $101 million in import duties on Pepsi beverage concentrate shipped from Ireland.
Scott Winslow, who filed the suit, worked as a distribution analyst in the company’s concentrate operations office in Valhalla from July 2002 to February 2005, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in White Plains.
PepsiCo imported $1.59 billion of soda beverage concentrate from Ireland from Jan. 20, 2004, through March 9, 2005, under a classification that allowed duty-free imports, according to the complaint. But the correct classification called for an importation duty of 6.4 percent, the suit said. The total amount of duties avoided by PepsiCo during the period was more than $101.9 million, according to the complaint. The concentrate is used to make soft drinks.
The complaint alleges that PepsiCo “never used reasonable care in identifying the proper classification for the importation of its soda concentrate from Ireland� but continued to use the wrong classification “because it was highly profitable.�
Winslow is pursuing the complaint under the False Claims Act, a federal statute that allows whistleblowers to receive financial rewards in cases of proven fraud against the government. Carey & Associates, a law firm in Southport, Conn., representing Winslow, announced the case yesterday.
PepsiCo denied the allegations.
“This is a totally frivolous lawsuit from a former employee,� said Dave DeCecco, a company spokesman. “U.S. customs has reviewed our concentrate shipment classifications from Ireland on multiple occasions and has raised no objections. We believe we’ve classified these shipments properly since the very beginning.�
The case was originally filed on Nov. 1, 2005. But the court did not unseal the case until Dec. 21 after the U.S. government declined to intervene in the case, according to a court document.
This entry was posted
on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 7:00 pm by Jay Loomis.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Category: In the courts
Print
| 
Email
