Anti-smuggling operations enhanced

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The ivory was seized. Photo: T.H.

According to the HCM City People's Procuracy, the number of smuggling perpetrators and criminals in Vietnam is growing with sophisticated tricks and a close collaboration between domestic perpetrators and foreign ones. Many organizations, enterprises and individuals have taken advantage of the loopholes of the law to carry out illegal transportation of goods, import and export smuggled goods for illicit profits, causing serious consequences, negatively affecting the economic development policies, and causing losses to the State budget.

The number of cases prosecuted due to smuggling has increased every year, especially in 2015 and 2016. From 2013 to date, the investigating police force under the HCM City Police has handled 81 cases of smuggling with 177 perpetrators. In addition, the General Department of Vietnam Customs and the HCM City Customs Department prosecuted 13 cases and transferred them to the HCM City Police for investigation under current regulations.

The amount of smuggling cases transferred from the HCM City Customs Department to the HCM City Police have accounted for two thirds of the total smuggling cases; and the number of smuggling cases prosecuted by the HCMC People's Procuracy accounted for 45% of total economic crime, which shows that the number of perpetrators and criminals in smuggling is increasing with complicated operations.

Perpetrators are mainly business owners, domestic companies and individuals. There were many cases where business owners hired Customs agents to perform violated procedures. There were also some cases with the violation of foreign people and civil servants in charge of checking the goods.

Smuggled goods are in a variety of categories. Accordingly, the perpetrators carry out smuggling of goods on the basis of the market’s demand for each period. The smuggled goods mainly are cars, electronic products, refrigerators, automotive spare parts, motorcycles, construction materials, general cargo. In particular, there are many prohibited goods smuggled such as ivory, rhino horns, precious wood; toxic products, and old machinery.

According to the analysis of some judicial agencies, the scale and form of crime is very diverse and sophisticated with some new tricks, such as taking advantage of Customs procedures to smuggle; falsifying legal documents and papers to implement Customs clearance of goods; and taking advantage of the preferential policies of the State in the field of import-export to perform acts of smuggling.

At the seminar, representatives of functional authorities said that the number of smuggling cases which was prosecuted was much smaller than the actual violations. In addition, these representatives noted a number of difficulties in the operations against smuggling, such as incomplete legal documents which cause the misunderstanding of the Law and complicated legal processing. According to the HCMC People's Procuracy, smuggling perpetrators and criminals are very diverse, involving many industries and sectors, so they should be regulated by a lot of legal documents, Laws and regulations. However, there are many inconsistent and overlapping documents, Laws and regulations especially in the area of import and export, which causes difficulties for functional forces to apply and define crimes.

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In addition, through the smuggling cases which were detected and resolved, representatives from the Procuracy agencies, the Police force and the HCM City Customs Department also pointed out the shortcomings of the Law which perpetrators and criminals took advantage of such as making use of the loopholes in classification of Customs channels, falsifying digital signatures and Customs clearance agents to smuggle, which needs to be reported to functional authorities to seek solutions and handle.