Petroleum smuggling on the sea is still complicated

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Import-export activities in Hai Phong port - the first area implementing the NSW. Photo: T.Bình.

This is the information provided by the Director of Technical and Legal Policy Department (Vietnam Coast Guard) Tran Van Nam, to reporters at the press conference of the National Steering Committee 389 which took place on the morning of 31st July, 2018.

According to Nam, the crime situation on the sea was taking place complicatedly. In particular, smuggling and trade frauds has happened in many fields and different industries with increasingly sophisticated tricks, to avoid the patrols and control of competent forces.

Particularly, petroleum-related crimes tended to increase in both scale and volume. Many cases discovered by the Coast Guard were of great value and contained foreign elements. This activity occurred mainly in the sea areas such as the North East, the North Central and the South.

In the first six months of 2018, the Coast Guard conducted hundreds of patrols to control key sea areas. As a result, the force inspected 179 ships and boats of various types and imposed administrative sanctions of more than VND 700 million.

In the fight against smuggling and trade frauds, the Coast Guard detected and handled 37 ships with 138 offenders; seized 7.5 million litters of petroleum, 25,000 litters of FO oil; 64 tons of urea; 728 tons of iron ore; 8,000 tons of coal and 1,500 tons of cement clinker. The force liquidated the confiscated material evidences, collected more than VND 91 billion; handed over to competent agencies 7 cases which included 6 ships and 1 canoe; seized 99 kgs of firecrackers; 26,450 packs of illegally imported cigarettes and 33,000 pigeons ...

The Coast Guard also detected and handled 20 ships with 107 offenders, including 20 foreigners involved in petroleum trade; fined VND 1.4 billion; confiscated 7.5 million litters of petroleum; liquidated material evidences and paid to the state budget over VND 90 billion.

Tran Van Nam explained that in the first months of 2018, the number of ships and boats operating on the sea increased, especially fishing boats, so the demand for petroleum in fishery exploitation was significant. Meanwhile, the domestic petroleum price was higher than the petroleum traded on the sea (partly due to illegal trade of petroleum without paying taxes - Reporter). In addition, fishery logistic services on the sea failed to meet the needs of fishermen in both volume and price.

For example, in the South West sea area, petroleum smugglers were Vietnamese who connect with foreigners, deal with price, time and place of goods delivery and payment method, then they directly deliver petroleum on the sea.

Some the fishery logistic services bought oil from inland and after selling their oil, they continued to buy floating oil from foreign ships to re-sell to fishermen (low cost but high profitability - Reporter).

In the Northern and Central seas, smugglers took advantage of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) policy for countries under the 1982 Convention on the Law of the sea (LOS) to commit smuggling and trade frauds on petroleum products. Since the 1982 LOS Convention did not regulate the commercial matter, foreign ships took advantage of it to operate on sea areas in the exclusive economic zone.

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In addition, this activity had the phenomenon of taking advantage of a re-used international bill of lading of the same company to cope with the competent authorities when being inspected, arrested for use of numberless ships and ships with fake numbers for trading, causing difficulties for the investigation process.