More than 3 million packs of contraband cigarettes seized, the largest ever

The ship of Fleet 1 (in blue) is getting close to a ship committing violating the anchorage area. Photo: T.Binh

According to a Customs Newspaper, on March 19, the Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department (General Department of Customs) successfully broke the largest cigarette smuggling case at sea ever.

Implementing the TL320 specialized project, at 3:30 on March 19, at the coordinates 20019.838’N; 107029.884'E in the Tonkin Gulf, the Fleet 1 under the Anti-smuggling and Investigation Department discovered that CHUNG CHING ship (Palau nationality) was illegally transferring cigarettes to high-speed canoes without a serial number for domestic consumption.

The Ship of Fleet 1 gets close to the infringing ship

When discovering the Anti-smuggling force, the high-speed canoes ran away and the captain of CHUNG CHING ship also immediately speeded up to the Buoy No. 0 toward China sea.

Although the patrol boats of the Customs force issued signals to stop the ships for inspection, smugglers still ran and disobeyed the orders, forcing officers and soldiers on the patrol boats to fire warning shots.

At the inspection time, the captain of CHUNG CHING ship declared that the ship included 22 foreign crew members, carried about 8,549 bales, equivalent to 4,274 million cigarettes of all kinds, including 555, ESSI, YUXI, and DOUBLE ...

More than 3 million packs of smuggled cigarettes were seized, the largest ever.

The preliminary inspection results showed that about 2,000 bales of cigarettes were successfully transferred to five high-speed canoes (equivalent to one million packs), the number of remaining cigarettes on the ship was about 6,549 bales or 3,274 million packs of cigarettes of all kinds.

The Fleet 1 is escorting CHUNG CHING ship and all of the infringing goods to the safe anchorage area in the waters of Quang Ninh province.

Infringing goods

Director of the Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department, Nguyen Hung Anh, said: This is a very serious case, the smugglers use any means and many sophisticated tricks with a huge volume of infringing goods.

The Anti-smuggling and Investigation Department is working with the Investigating Police Department for corruption, economic smuggling crimes- C03 (Ministry of Public Security) to urgently investigate, verifies and handles according to law provisions...

Some photos cut from the clip.