Why is smuggling on the southwest border increasing?

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Tinh Bien Border Gate Customs (Customs Department of An Giang) count smuggled goods.

Smuggled goods are hidden by many ways

This year, due to the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic, import and export activities across the An Giang border fell sharply, especially the exchange of goods and the passage of border residents.

However, due to the profit, some suspects took advantage to transport contraband from Cambodia to Vietnam with more sophisticated tricks. Recently, An Giang interdisciplinary anti-smuggling group discovered a truck, driven by Tran Bao Ha, born in 1979, living in Vinh Phuoc hamlet, Nui Sam ward, Chau Doc city. The operator hid nearly 1,500 packages of cigarettes in a homemade compartment. To avoid the authorities, the truck was loaded with used corrugated iron and wooden planks. In order to get the smuggled cigarettes out, the Inter-agency Task Force had to use a rope.

A case of transporting smuggled cigarettes in a passenger car was also discovered by the Anti-Smuggling Task Force of Long Xuyen City Police on the night of December 31, 2020. Through inspection, the working group found nearly 1,400 packs of foreign cigarettes, many illegally imported brands were hidden under the floor and in the car. At the police station, Nguyen Minh Luan initially admitted that the hidden cigarettes were hired by others from Chau Doc to Long Xuyen for VND500,000.

In addition to tobacco products, smuggled sugar also tends to increase, with the trick of using invoices of legal shipments to turn around for infringing shipments.

Due to the strengthening of the border control, smugglers use a number of tricks to bring smuggled goods across the border to Vietnam, such as: drifting along the water, carrying belts across the open entrance at night, camouflage on fake fishing boats.

Promoting the strength of interdisciplinary anti-smuggling

Facing the situation of smuggling increasing along the border of An Giang, to effectively prevent smuggled goods as well as ensure pandemic prevention, eight working groups, with more than 170 officers and soldiers under six anti-smuggling forces including: Police, Border Guard, Military, Customs, Market Management, Southwestern Mobile Police Regiment, were established at many hot spots in the province.

According to Steering Committee 389 in An Giang, since the beginning of 2020, due to the relatively well controlled smuggling and illegal cross-border transport of goods, the volume of contraband goods in the country has been exhausted, and demand is increasing. Along with that, the profit earned from smuggling is high, so the smuggling and illegal cross-border trafficking of goods is forecasted to increase again at the end of the year. Suspects enjoy every favorable opportunity to transport goods across the border and inland for consumption.

Since October, when flooding occurred, the demand for goods increased to serve production, business and consumption activities in the last months of 2020.

As the Tet holidays are coming, smuggling increases, especially in sugar and tobacco.

In 2020, the functional forces inspect and detect 2,437 cases of violation of sale, purchase, transportation of banned goods and smuggled goods, up 38.7% over the same period in 2019. The total value of goods seized is over VND131.65 billion, up 98% over the same period. The total amount of fines for administrative violations and the sale of confiscated goods is VND30,117 billion, up 11.2% over the same period. Seized sugar and cigarettes increased by nearly 50%.