ISS gives advice on penalty avoidance

The ISS is advising all crew, vessel owners, masters and operators to triple check passenger data before submitting Electronic Advanced Notice of Arrival (E-NOA) and Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS) reports to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

While common errors such as misspelled names and transposed dates on the crew list section of the E-NOA are often corrected without penalties, the CBP’s strict enforcement of any identified mistakes will result in a US$5,000 fine for the first offence, going up to US$10,000 for additional violations.

The CBP office in Washington, DC, said: “This is not a new APIS policy. According to the CBP National APIS Manager, mitigating factors are taken into consideration, but 100% accuracy has always been required. Failure to comply has always been subject to penalties; transmitting inaccurate data is serious and to repeatedly do so is unacceptable.”