Necessity to amend regulations on violations of trading smuggled alcohol

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Customs officials of Quang Tri Customs Department inspect smuggled alcohol

According to the Ministry of National Defense, in 5 years of implementing Article 5 and Article 6 of Joint Circular No.36/2012/TTLT-BCT-BCA-BTP-BYT-TANDTC-VKSNDTC dated December 7th 2012 of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuracy, regulating the violations related to the trading of smuggled alcohol, smuggled tobacco products and raw tobacco (refer to as Joint Circular 36). This is an important legal basis for competent authorities to apply effectively and legally on handling confiscated smuggled alcohol as material evidence. At the same time, it has basically reduced non-originating and inferior alcohol brought into the domestic market.

Statistics show that in the two years of 2015 and 2016, the Ministry of National Defense’s forces directly detected and coordinated with other competent authorities to arrest and handle a total of 22 cases with 26 perpetrators, 3,598 bottles of smuggled alcohol with a total value of over 1.6 billion vnd.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in 2 years of 2015 and 2016, the market management forces over the country inspected and handled 344 cases with over 5 billion vnd in the total value of confiscated material evidence, with the total destroyed quantity of over 27,207 bottles of all kinds of alcohol. However, in the practice of inspection of smuggled alcohol performed by the market management forces, most of the cases were arrested in transportation phase: the owners were not identified, the number of smuggled goods is usually small or the brands of alcohol did not unify.

According to the provisions of Clause 1, Article 5 of Joint Circular No.36, smuggled alcohol confiscated in a violation case must be destroyed in the following cases: no trademark, unidentified manufacturer or quantity under 100 product units. In cases where the quantity is 100 products or more, smuggled alcohol shall be inspected according to regulations but if there is at least 1 product with unsuitable ingredients, norms and contents, all shall be destroyed.

If the quantity of confiscated smuggled alcohol is from 100 products or more and they have suitable ingredients, norms and contents as those of the authentic wine product supplied by authorized producers and in accordance with the relevant national technical regulations of Vietnam or in accordance with food safety regulations for the products, it shall be auctioned.

According to the Ministry of National Defense, the regulation on handling smuggled alcohol is not suitable for the actual practice of dealing with this kind of commodity, thus causing waste to the society and the State. In addition, taking a sample of at least 0.5% of the amount of confiscated alcohol is unreasonable and costly because of sampling cost. The Ministry of National Defense recommends that in cases where confiscated smuggled alcohol products belongs to the same category, brand name, uniform package, code, volume, factory and form, taking too many samples, in this case, is not necessary.

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On the other hand, before submitting samples for smuggled alcohol, competent forces need information from the manufacturer to control, to determine if the alcohol is produced by the manufacturer or not. If they are produced by the manufacturer, then they shall be inspected according to the ingredients, contents and norms of the manufacturers to determine their conformity with the national standards. Meanwhile, smuggled alcohol is often produced by many sources and from different countries, it is very difficult for the competent forces to look up information or contact the producers. In addition, the condition of warehouse facilities and preserving facilities for smuggled alcohol in many localities is still inadequate, or the warehouses do not meet the specific conditions to ensure the quality of the alcohol products as prescribed.

According to various People's Committees of provinces, cities and local Customs units, the legal documents referred in Joint Circular 36 have ceased to be effective. Therefore, in order to ensure smuggled alcohol handling in line with the practice, to avoid wastefulness in the use of State budget to destroy, and state-owned asset loss, and at the same time, to unify the law provision application of the enforcement forces, the Ministry of Industry and Trade proposes to the Ministry of Finance to report to the Prime Minister to instruct the relevant ministries and branches to elaborate a legal document replacing the Joint Circular 36 .

Regarding the regulation on handling confiscated smuggled alcohol, in the case of reducing the number of confiscated smuggled alcohol for compulsory destruction, the Ministry of Industry and Trade proposed that the unit assigned to preside over the drafting shall consider the percentage of inspection samples for different levels of confiscated quantity to match the actual situation. In addition, it is necessary to specify the minimum ingredients, norms and contents which are required to be inspected for confiscated smuggled alcohol in order to provide the suitable, precise basis for the handling units.

According to the Ministry of National Defense, the drafting unit needs to amend and supplement in a way that specifies the regulations on handling confiscated smuggled alcohol, the auction of material evidence as well as considers the percentage of samples for inspection according to different levels of confiscated quantity to consistent with the practice.