VCN – The Central Anti-Smuggling Enforcement Unit (Unit 2) under the Anti-smuggling and Investigation Department of Vietnam Customs has coordinated with local customs departments to prevent and handle some cases of taking advantage of independent transport and goods transit for smuggling.
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| A violation of HQN Viet Lao Logistic Company Limited was detected by Customs in November, 2021. |
Head of Unit 2 Nguyen Khac Hanh said the unit is assigned to perform customs control in provinces from Nghe An to Ninh Thuan and the Central Highlands provinces, 10 national and international land border gates adjacent to Laos and Cambodia, and 15 seaports and major international airports in Da Nang and Cam Ranh.
Despite the complicated development of Covid-19 pandemic, affecting the economy in 2021, smuggling and trade fraud still took place with increasingly sophisticated methods in the Central region and Central Highlands.
“The taking advantage of impendent transport to smuggle in 2021 and previous years in provinces of the Central region has taken place. Enterprises inaccurately declared the name of goods and transported products across many seaports of countries before importing to Vietnam to avoid being detected by competent agencies,” Hanh said.
In addition, perpetrators hired other people to establish bogus businesses and carried out procedures to import and transit general goods, consumer goods and banned goods, conditional imports, high-tax rate goods shipped from Europe, Japan, and the US to Da Nang port and then transited to Laos.
Smugglers abused the shortage of control forces and long transit routes to exchange goods to smuggle and illegally transport goods across border gates.
Smugglers carry out procedures for goods transit in accordance with regulations. However, after exporting goods to land border gates such as Cha Lo (Quang Binh province) and Lao Bao (Quang Tri province), the smugglers gather goods at the border gates and transport smuggled goods across border crossings into Vietnam.
In 2021, unit 2 drastically followed directions from the General Department of Vietnam Customs and the Anti-smuggling and Investigation Department to strengthen the control on the regime of transit, transshipment, temporary import for re-export or export from bonded warehouses for smuggling and trade fraud; collected information and assessed risks to identify targeted shipments for inspection and handling.
In the near future, unit 2 will execute the plan on anti-smuggling and illegal transportation of goods across border gates at the Lunar New Year 2022.
Fight against acts of abusing policies and procedures to refuse to receive goods or re-export them and illegally transport goods across border gates under the GDVC’s Plan 5483/KH-TCHQ dated November 22, 2021 and Plan 1199/KH-ĐTCBL dated November 22, 2021 of the Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department.
Collect information and closely control areas to discover violations and tackle smuggling rings and gangs, inspect shipments transited across Da Nang Seaport to Laos or from Laos transited across Vietnam to a third country.
In 2021, Unit 2 processed data, collected information, identified high-risk shipments, and coordinated with local customs departments to handle eight violations with a value of infringing goods totalling VND7.377 billion. For the control of transit goods, Unit 2 inspected five transit shipments of three enterprises. The Unit coordinated with Lao Bao Border gate to inspect the transit shipment under the independent transport declaration made by HQN Viet Lao Logistic Company Limited, located Ngu Hanh Son District, Da Nang, at Da Nang Seaport Customs Branch in November, 2021. The declared goods include 44 items, including cosmetics and foods, electronic products made in Japan. Through inspection, Customs discovered 137 plates, flowerpots, ceramic decorations, and 5,089kg of sand, gravel and cement contained in sacks. Unit 2 is conducting verification. Unit 2 coordinated with the Da Nang Seaport Customs Branch to inspect three shipments with suspicious signs and one re-export shipment. Currently, the Unit has taken samples for verification and asked the branch to not process re-export procedures for the shipment. |
By Nguyen Quoc/Ngoc Loan