Suspicious mineral exports investigated

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Coal mining operations. Photo: Internet

The General Department of Vietnam Customs (GDVC) requests local customs departments to invest and handle consignments of exported minerals to control and prevent smuggling and trade fraud.

Local customs department are asked to direct their customs branches to follow instructions, check and handle violations, and request customs officials to comply with regulations in customs.

The Customs Department of Goods Verification is requested to verify exported mineral samples. If the samples are eligible for export, the department must report to the GDVC and notify customs branches for handling.

The GDVC assigns the Post Clearance Audit Department to conduct post clearance audit for businesses with signs of offences.

The Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department is assigned to lead and instruct local customs departments to make plans to invest and handle violations in mineral exports, focusing on collecting information, data, documents related to mineral exports and identify violations.

Coordinate with local customs departments in identifying foreign documents for export mineral consignments with suspected signs of law violation.

Work with relevant units to implement online supervision for inspection and sampling of exported minerals.

The Risk Management Department is asked to classify risks and summarize problems related to inspection classification for exported minerals and propose appropriate plans to the GDVC.

Previously, the GDVC instructed local customs departments to only allow to register export declaration for minerals exploited from mines that are granted the permit by competent authorities as per Article 82 of the Law on Minerals, meet provisions in Article 14 of Decree 17/2020/ND-CP, are on the list of products legible for export issued by the specialized management ministries, or subject to special cases approved for export by the Prime Minister or specialized bodies.

It also instructed departments in performing customs declaration, customs inspection, physical inspection and handling inspection results.

All the GDVC’s directions are aimed at following directives of the Prime Minister in Directive 38/CT-TTg dated September 29, 2020; promptly detecting and preventing smuggling and commercial fraud for exported mineral products.