Anti-smuggling on the waterway: the Customs meets with difficulties

The support equipment is limited to the effectiveness of anti-smuggling has not been high. Photo: Quang Hung.

Legalization for the contraband goods

With seniority in the fight against smuggling on the waterway, Deputy Head of the Northern Area Smuggling Control Team, under the Department of Investigation and anti-Smuggling (the General Department of Customs), Mr. Ngo Thanh Tuan shared that smuggling on waterways was often large scale, the smuggling object was venturesome, sophisticated and unexpected tricky. In order to legalize the transportation of goods without legal origin for the domestic consumption, the subjects often turned around invoices and documents, even used the blank invoices of the “bogus” companies or prepared the blank detailed list of purchases from the border residents. On the sea route, the objects used the transportation of smuggled goods with large capacity, modern, attached radar and positioning system, withstand the high waves, large wind to transport the smuggled goods successfully. They also changed the name, and a number of means, route, used the means to run around the sea, waited for the opportunity to split up, to share apart to disperse the goods easily. The subjects anchored the ships and the boats offshore, then carry out moving the smuggled into the small vessels, it was a difficulty for the functional forces to arrest, especially oil and petrol.

Agreed with the point of view, the representative of the Police Department on Smuggling Crime Prevention (C74, the General Department of Police, the Ministry of Public Security) said that for the oil and petrol items, the domestic subjects established the organizations with legal business entity, took advantage of the purchase and transportation of the goods among the enterprises to legitimize the smuggled petrol and oil that were purchased from abroad for domestic consumption. After the ships carrying the smuggled oil and petrol arrived in Vietnam, they continued to notify the small vessels to arrive the "convention" places to split out and ship into the land. The ships which received the goods brought the contracts, the blank sale documents among the companies of the same system, when the goods have been received, the subjects completed immediately the contract, and documents to match the goods that had just received to transfer the warehouses or takeaway consumption. On the other hand, the smugglers often used the ships and the boats with high capacity, completed and modern maritime equipment, and hired the experienced sailors with proficiency in canals, took advantage of bad weather and transferred at night to move the adjacent sea areas to avoid the control posts of the functional forces.

The old support equipment

Statistics from the Anti-Smuggling Investigation Department, for 3 years (from 2014 to 2016), the Customs control forces have discovered, imposed sanction 1,038 cases; prosecuted 105 cases of smuggling and illegal goods transportation on waterways. On average, the Customs forces seized the violation goods worth nearly 122 billion VND per year; Collected tax arrears and supplemented the public fund over 87 billion VND.

Emerging a number of complex cases such as early in 2016, the Anti-Smuggling Investigation Department in collaboration with the Police Department for Investigating Economic Crime and Corruption (C46, the General Police Department, the Ministry of Public Security) quashed successfully the specialized project XD116 on petroleum smuggling activities of the Duong Dong-Hoa Phu Joint Stock Company in the Binh Thuan sea areas, seized more than 9,000 tons of unleaded Ron 92 petrol, arrested 8 subjects. On another incident, on July 15th, 2017, the South Sea Control Squadron (Squadron 3, the Anti-Smuggling Investigation Department) coordinated with Department C74 to detect the ship Thanh Chau 09 in the sea area of Tea Vinh which had signs of the goods transportation without legal documents. At the time of inspection, the captain and crew members on the ship admitted to shipping 600 m3 of DO oil and did not show any documents to prove the legal origin of the shipment.

Although the certain results have been achieved, the Customs forces are always meeting difficulties with the support equipment because they were old, often occurred the damage problems, the ability to sustain wave and wind limited... that affected the controlling and patrolling activities. Therefore, in order to improve the efficiency of the work, the Customs forces proposed the Ministry of Finance to submit to the Government for study and change of the expense level for basic professional work in line with the reality of anti-smuggling on waterways (such as facilitating binoculars, ships, high-speed boats...). At the same time, suggested all authorities, Ministries, and Branches to promulgate, amend and finalize quickly the system of legal documents such as regulations on import duty-free of consumer goods for border residents; The regime of invoices and documents for the goods circulated on the market; The coordination regulations on combating smuggling on waterway... In addition, strengthening the customs control forces should be continued through training and retraining; they should train knowledge about investigating, fighting the specialized projects, reconnaissance operations; coordinate actively with local authorities, the forces of Police, Border Guard, Coast Guard in exchange of information, the situation of activities of smugglers on the waterway.