HCM City Customs: Sharing and warning several sophisticated tricks of hiding narcotics

Ecstasy was detected inside gift packages by HCM City Customs on 25/6/2018. Photo: T.H

3 lines of transporting drugs

According to the evaluation of Mr.Huynh Nam, Head of Anti-drugs Enforcement Team, from the beginning of the year till now, drugs were transported illegally into HCM City through 3 main lines: airline, express service and the post office providing international money transfer service of Vietnam Post Corporation.

The form of import-export used by criminals is non-merchant (gifts, presents). The type of drugs that are imported illegally to HCM City are mainly meth, cannabis and ecstasy (MDMA) originating from America, and countries in Europe like Holland, Germany and Belgium,...

In that, the Tan Son Nhat International Airport is still one of the key areas which have high potential of becoming a gathering point for transshipment of narcotics, especially for exporting heroin and precursor substances, importing cocaine, cannabis and other synthetic narcotics.

Furthermore, the line of international post office and express service are the key areas for the operation of importing and exporting many kinds of western medicine containing drugs,

psychotropics, synthetic drugs, and ecstasy in the form of gifts and presents; importing drugs from foreign countries for transshipment to third countries; Exporting illegal drugs, illegal pre-substances by using sophisticated camouflage in non-merchant shipments to Australia.

Not only warning about the tricks of hiding drugs from the cases detected by HCM City Customs, the Head of the Anti-drug Enforcement Team also warned about many new tricks when transporting drugs which were detected by the Customs authorities in other countries and arrested in recent time.

At the conference, the leaders of the border gate customs units also shared many difficulties and inadequacies in the struggle and drug prevention in the management area.

Mr. Tran Ngoc Anh, Deputy Director of Tan Son Nhat International Airport Customs Branch said that the unit has detected many cases of hidden drugs which were very sophisticated. By the end of July, the unit had detected more than 30 cases of illegal transport of narcotics, seized over 40 kg of marijuana hidden in gifts.

From the detection of sophisticated tricks for hiding narcotics, as well as new kinds of drugs, Mr. Tran Ngoc Anh suggested organizing regular training courses for improving the knowledge of screening and analyzing the images of screenings, updating of new hiding techniques ... for officials who work on anti-smuggling in general and anti-drug in particular.

Cannabis was found in buns packaged sent by air. Photo: T.H

Moreover, Mr. Nguyen Van Anh, Deputy director of Express Customs Branch, said that the typical procedure for import-export goods via express services is very simple. For the exported goods, the consignor only needs to write the information of the consignee without presenting an identity card.

Similarly, the imported goods are shipped to the recipient's home. If goods are found to contain a suspected drug, the subject would immediately abandon. The place of receipt is nonexistent, or the address is vague such as an apartment with no specific room number, ... thus it is difficult for customs authorities to search for goods owners when detecting violations.

Effectively implement the Directive of the Director General

The situation of drug transportation in the last months of 2018 was definitely complicated, and the number of drug trafficking acts will be difficult to reduce, so Deputy Director of HCM City Customs Department Pham Quoc Hung, directed the units to drastically implement specific solutions in order to strictly implement the Directive No. 4550/CT-TCHQ dated 2/8/2018 of the General Director of Vietnam Customs on enhancing drug prevention in the customs management area.

Mr. Hung said that the General Director's directives clearly indicated the risks and tricks of the target groups on each level and area, and the customs officials in each unit had to thoroughly understand and concretize them into the solutions for implementing this directive effectively.

In addition, with the anti-drug model which has been newly organized in accordance with the decision of the General Department of Vietnam Customs, the model for anti-drug at the department level and the anti-drug enforcement team at the department should be merged into a control and supervision group.

From this model, Deputy Director Pham Quoc Hung directed the units to pay attention to intensifying drug prevention because the tricks are increasingly sophisticated.

The units continued to implement the long-term plans and annual plans of the HCM City Customs Department well, which have been developed, but at the same time strengthen the review and grasp the situation based on the management characteristics of each unit in order to have a specific combat plan. Always update on tricks, as well as new transportation forms by the subjects for proactively combating and effective prevention...