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According to the Hotline of the National Steering Committee 389, the competent forces have discovered an illegal transportation case of nearly 1,200 mobile phones.

Since May 2015, the Standing Office of the National Steering Committee 389 has established a Hotline through the following telephone numbers: 0981389389, 0961389389; e-mail bcd389@customs.gov.vn to receive applications, letters of reflection of people, organizations, enterprises, press agencies on acts of smuggling, trade fraud and trade and production of counterfeited and poor-quality goods. At the same time, creating a channel for people and enterprises to denounce the acts of irresponsibility, supporting, shielding, and negative behavior of the competent forces in this work.

According to the Standing Office, after 3 years of implementing the hotline, monthly, the office receives from 150 to 200 phone calls to the hotlines; about 20 to 30 e-mails and 10 to 15 letters of denunciation. However, by classifying, only about 10 to 20 messages have contents related to smuggling, trade frauds and counterfeits, and have grounds to conduct preliminary analysis and verification to propose the transfer to the units and localities for handling. The reason is that most of the received information via the hotline is junk information with unspecific content and out of the field of anti-smuggling, trade fraud and counterfeits.

Through receiving, some information has been verified by the Office before transferring to competent authorities for more effective handling. For example, the arrest of a number of illegal printing establishments in Ba Dinh district, Hanoi. Hanoi market management force checked and seized a large number of books, printing machinery and equipment and fined 200 million; The arrest of a car carrying smuggled electronic products at Thanh Tri Bridge, Hanoi with a value of over VND 2 billion; The case of a petrol retail store in Bac Giang selling poor quality RON 92 petrol, without legal origin and without certificate of business household.

Deputy Director of the Anti-Smuggling Investigation Department (General Department of Customs) Nguyen Khanh Quang shares that besides receiving information from the hotline of the National Steering Committee 389, the Customs has deployed its hotline to meet the need of enterprises (telephone number: 19009299) at 3 levels of General Department, Department and Branch, which is considered as an important information channel, contributing to improving the efficiency of state management on Customs, especially in the fight against smuggling and trade fraud. Through the hotline, the Customs receive a lot of valuable and accurate information, helping the Customs to establish specialized cases and handle smuggling in a timely fashion.

Also, Mr. Quang said that the information received via the hotline of the Standing Office and transferred to the competent forces has brought about positive results. However, the number of messages received over the hotline in 2015 and 2016 was larger than 2017 and 2018. Therefore, the Standing Office should make a full report to evaluate and find the reason so as to introduce solutions to raise the efficiency of this work.

On the other hand, some urgent cases have not been transferred to the competent forces in a timely fashion. Thus, in addition to transferring by document, the Standing Committee should transfer the cases as quickly as possible to promote the efficiency of the hotline. Also, for serious cases, the Standing Officer should transfer the case by emergency document, even by secret mode to avoid disclosing information so that smugglers find ways to deal with and cause difficulties for the handling. In addition, through the information channels from the press and radio agencies, the Standing Office is required to classify information and transfer it to the competent authorities for timely handling.

Approving with the above opinion, Deputy Director of Market Management Department (under the General Department of Market Management) Nguyen Thanh Binh added, the market management force is responsible for preventing acts of trading in smuggled goods, counterfeit goods and goods with unclear origin and intellectual property infringement, etc., in the domestic market. Therefore, the information from the hotline of the National Steering Committee 389 is very necessary and important for them to handle violations.

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Mr. Nguyen Thanh Binh suggested, the Standing Office should coordinate with the competent forces, including the Market Management force to introduce and release leaflets on the hotline. In the near future, the market management force organized at the central level (the General Department of Market Management) to the local level (the Market Management Department) will actively coordinate with the Office to promote the hotline to supermarkets, trade centers and borders and so on. Thereby, the people can denounce the acts of smuggling and trading of fake goods.