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HCM City Customs strengthens inspection of goods through scanners. Photo: T.H

Fraudulent tricks

According to the Customs Enforcement Team under HCM City Customs Department, the situation of smuggling, trade fraud, and illegal transportation of goods through seaports and airport border gates in Ho Chi Minh City has fallen during the complicated development of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, there have been many new tricks to bring banned and contraband goods into Vietnam. In addition to the tricks of renaming and changing manifests, HCM City Customs also discovered banned and contraband goods through information analysis and pre-clearance screening of import and export goods amid the pandemic.

“The smugglers abused difficulties in trade, travel, scarcity of goods and necessities and the focus on anti-pandemic work of authorities to commit violations,” the leader of the Customs Enforcement Team said.

According to HCM City Customs Department, the Green and Yellow channel declarations are cleared very quickly, so there is a potential risk when businesses take advantage of it to commit fraud.

Through inspection, HCM City Customs has discovered many violations through the Green and Yellow channels; amendments to the manifest to avoid the inspection and control of the Customs authority for smuggling and illegal transportation of goods across the border; or declaration goods with low tax and price or declaration of goods with high tax but including banned, fake goods or conditional import goods.

In addition to sophisticated tricks in fraud and smuggling of goods, through analysis, HCM City Customs said that the situation of illegal transportation of narcotics from abroad through HCM City Customs Department has become complicated and serious.

Notably, from the beginning of 2022, authorities have seized cases of illegal transportation of large volumes of methamphetamine and heroin from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia through the land border gate to HCM City, then exported to Taiwan (China) and the Philippines by sea. This is an alarming phenomenon, so the customs department has guided relevant units to actively monitor and develop plans and solutions.

Controlling specialized types

To strictly control seaport and airport border gates, from early 2022, HCM City Customs Department has proactively taken many solutions in line with the actual situation.

Accordingly, the department has requested relevant units to strengthen patrol and control activities on rivers, seaports and airports; collect information on processing and investment goods; goods in export processing zones and high-tech zones; continue to strengthen the fight against forged documents for customs clearance and fake documents to bring goods out of the customs area; promptly prevent goods in border transfer, goods in transit without permits and wrong declaration; and control businesses importing items originating from Africa and items that businesses can take advantage of to hide ivory.

In addition, HCM City Customs Department has directed its units to strictly control non-commercial imported goods because there have been cases of violations of this type, with the tricks of inaccurate declarations of quantity and origin of goods to cheat prices and avoid submission of permits.

In 2022, HCM City Customs will focus on controlling export goods. Accordingly, customs management programs for exported goods will be revised in the direction of strengthening the inspection rate by routes and key items.

The customs department will select and conduct random inspections or screening of export goods that have been channeled into Green or Yellow to assess the law compliance of businesses.

After two years of stagnation, now international flights are re-operating and increasing day by day through Tan Son Nhat international airport.

In addition to arranging officers and facilitating passengers, HCM City Customs Department has implemented many solutions to ensure strict control of the area, effective and timely coordination with relevant units to improve the efficiency of the fight against smuggling and trade fraud.

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Moreover, HCM City Customs Department has also recommended many contents to effectively serve the fight against smuggling and trade fraud in the area, such as adding automatic functions of checking the number of passengers, the type of flight, the list of information by duplicate flights; taking measures to manage and prevent the abuse of manifest modification for smuggling and illegal transportation of goods across borders.