Noi Bai Customs detects new smuggling tricks

The Customs seizes suspected gold.

In the first days of 2023, Noi Bai International Airport Customs Branch arrested six passengers illegally transporting 108 taels of metal suspected to be gold exceeding the amount allowed under the law.

To avoid detection by law enforcement forces, smugglers have made this suspected gold into rings and necklaces and divided them into small amounts for many smugglers to transport.

Significantly, among detected cases, smugglers only flew on flights from 11pm to 1am to avoid detection by law enforcement. Currently, Noi Bai International Airport Customs Branch has made a record of the suspects and seized all these suspected gold.

On January 4, the Exit Luggage Customs Procedures Team under the Noi Bai International Airport Customs Branch and the International Scanning Security Team of Noi Bai Aviation Security Center inspected a passenger's luggage on a flight to Incheon (Korea). As a result, it detected 1,858 Korean Won, denominations of 50,000 Won without customs declaration.

This passenger did not declare the exceeded amount and violated regulations in Point a of clause 1, article 2 and clause 1 of article 3 of Circular 15/2011/TT-NHNN dated August 12 of the State Bank. The amount of foreign currency was not declared and was not issued the permit by the State Bank. The Customs returned the currency to the passenger, issued a decision on temporarily seizing the exceeded amount, fined the passengers, and handled the case.

According to the branch, if Customs does not detect illegal transportation of foreign currency across the border in a timely fashion, it will affect the foreign exchange policy of the State Bank of Vietnam.

In 2022, the branch discovered many violations, smuggling and illegal cross-border transportation of goods, handled 190 cases, including 180 administrative sanctions, prosecuted five cases and transferred four cases to other agencies.

Notably, the branch also tackled many cases of transporting drugs and banned goods. For example, in November, the branch coordinated with the Anti-drug Enforcement Team to conduct physical inspections for two consignments with total drugs of 33.4 kg of marijuana and transferred these consignments to Team 7 PC04 of Ha Noi Police for further investigation.

Also, in September 2022, the branch detected and sent a notification about a consignment containing 14kg of synthetic drugs to the North Hanoi Customs Branch.

The branch also detected two cases of transporting wildlife products listed in CITES in April and June. Specifically, in April 2022, the Customs arrested six rhino horns weighing 1.9 kg in two checked baggage with the passenger's name Le Van Tuan and transferred the case to the PC03 for prosecution.

With the achievement in 2022 and at the beginning of 2023, the Noi Bai International Airport Customs Branch has actively implemented plans to gain positive results in the prevention of smuggling, illegal cross-border transportation of goods, and commercial fraud; fight against drug smuggling; anti-forgery of origin, trademark, infringement of intellectual property rights, illicit transhipment.

Ngọc Linh