Long An Customs: fight against smuggling in the approaching days of the Tet.

	Long An: Seized nearly 9 tons of contraband sugar
	Arrested the illegal money over 100 million VND crossing the border

Used electrical appliances and refrigeration shipments worth over 5 billion were detected and seized by Customs Control under the Long An Customs Department in April, 2016. Photo: provided by the Long An Customs.

According to the identification of Long An Customs, in 2016, although the illegal trafficking of goods across the border routes changed and took place regionally, smuggling still happened and smugglerswere desperate and fiercely opposed Forces to rob goods. Smuggled goods were mostly used electrical appliances, cigarettes and Thailand sugar, which were mainly transported outside the areas under Customs management. Other consumer goods decreased the flow of cross-border transport due to the implementation of positive anti-smuggling from the functional forces such as Police, Border Guard, and market Management. The most methods and tricks of smugglers were hiring border residents moving to Cambodia to receive and carry goods by motorbikes through minor trails to Vietnam and transfer to other peoplewho used motorboats and motorbikes to transport the goods to the inland areas. The smuggling often took place at night or indays off and breaks of the functional forces. The transportation process was closelyorganized;the smugglers often arranged people to track the functional forces to inform each other by mobile phone for safety in goods transport. Besides, the smugglers frequently changed the transport routes where there were anti-smuggling forces.

Before unpredictable movements of smuggling in the province, the functional forces of Long An Customs proactively implemented many activities to monitor the situation, patrol and control to discover and prevent smuggling taking place in the areas under Customs management. Accordingly, the Customs Control Team developed a plan to fight against smuggling and collaborated with the functional forces in the locality to detect and prevent violations and deployed patrols and controls in the border areas, thereby detecting and arresting some large violations. A typical case was arresting 2 wooden boats with a capacity of 30 tons containing washing machines, refrigerators, amplifiers, CD players, motorbikes and some other commodities at the river area of BinhHoaTrung commune, KienTuong town in April, 2016 with a value of arrested consignments worth over 5 billion vnd, and another case was the cooperation between the Long An Customs with the PC 46, Long An Public Security discovered and arrested the transport of scrap without documents, Customs temporarily seized 53 tons of scrap (iron and steel), a truck with Cambodian number plate and an iron boat which was the transporting boat. In addition, in 2016, Customs control forces underthe Long An Customs Department also discovered and arrested two cases ofillegal trafficking of smuggled cigarettes with7,500 packs of cigarettes. With the excellent achievements above,there were 3 individuals of the Customs Control Team under the Long An Customs Department to be awarded for achievements in anti-smuggling across the borders by the People’s Committee of Long An province.

Together with the Customs control team, at the border gates, the Customs Branch at the BinhHiep International Gate, the Customs Branch at the My QuyTay border gate and the Customs Branch at the Hung Dien border gate also enhanced to understand the situation of the keys areas and closely manage the border gate areas, and collaborated with Border Guard Stations to strengthen patrols and prevent the occurrence of large violations in the areas under Customs management. Last year, the Customs Branches in charge of the border of the Long An Customs Department also discovered and arrested 4 cases of illegal trafficking of smuggled foreign cigarettesand 1 case of illegal trafficking of money across the border with over 1,500 exhibits worth more than 14.5 million vnd.

According to the Long An Customs Department, in 2017, the situation of the areas under Customs control continues to be stable, there will be not much smuggled goods and illegally transported goods across the borders. However, during the approaching days of Tet 2017, the smuggling and illegal trafficking of goods tends to increase due to the increase of consumer demand, especially for cigarettes, beer, wine, sugar, bread candy, and monosodium glutamate.

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To enhance the anti-smuggling before, during and after the Tet Lunar New Year, from the beginning of November, 2016, the Long An Customs issued a document to direct the Customs Control Team to strengthen to understand the key areas in order to detect new methods and tricks to issue effective measures to prevent, arrest and handlein a timely fashion as prescribed; applied the operation measures to build a plan to fight and prevent the violations, focused on sensitive fields and fields which are easy to be abused, and controlled banned goods such as: drugs, weapons, reactionary documents, fireworks, money, alcohol, and cigarettes. At the same time, proactively collaborating with the functional forces in the locality to perform anti-smuggling inside and outside the areas under Customs control in accordance with the signed collaborative regulations. For the border gate Customs Branches, the leaders of Long An Customs Department also requested the units to tightly manage the border areas, enhance the inspection of exit and entry goods and means of transport to prevent the smuggling and not allow smuggling in the Customs areas; frequently coordinate with the Customs Control Team and the functional units in the province to exchange information, understand the situation of the localities, organizations and individuals involving in cross-border smuggling, especially in the trails, and minor sides of the border gate.