Boosting Combat against Trade Frauds

In order to timely prevent and drive back goods smuggling and trade frauds which has a rising trend in the amount with more and more sophisticated levels, the Vietnam Customs will instruct its units to take a great deal of measures in the coming time.

According to the Vietnam Customs, Mong Cai and Binh Lieu in Quang Ninh province, Tan Thanh and Coc Nam border gates, Thac Nem and Hang Doi areas in Lang Son, Lao Cai international border gate, Ca Lo-Quang Binh, Cau treo-Ha Tinh, Thuong Phuoc-Dong Thap, Tinh Bien-An Giang and Xa Xia-Kien Giang are still the country’s hot spots of anti-smuggling and trade frauds. Common tricks of goods smuggling and trade frauds are dividing goods into small amounts to transport across the border lines, or taking advantage of the policy on cross-border residence to distribute smuggled goods at markets or store them in private houses and then using motorbikes, cars, boats or canoes to transport and distribute goods inlands in the dark.

 

Along sea routes and international seaports in Quang Ninh, Hai Phong and the Central Region, there is a rising trend in the amount of cross-border smuggling and trade frauds cases. Most of smuggled goods of refrigeration products, dressmaking materials, bicycles, dishes and glasses come from China. Some imported goods of wine and tobacco for exporting to China were re-imported to the domestic market. 

In Quang Ninh, illegally exporting coal is still going on. Common operation method is taking advantage of the darkness to transport coal to areas along two banks of the Da Bac River in Uong Bi commune in Quang Ninh Province and Thuy Nguyen district in Hai Phong City and then load coal into vessels with tonnage of between 700 and 1,500 tons each. These ships having invoices and vouchers are allowed to transport inland goods to the central and the south regions, some vessels without invoices and vouchers when go across the Bach Long Vi island will change the direction to go straight China to illegally sell products to avoid the control of authorities.

 

Along with coal, ores were also illegally exported from Vietnam’s central region. Common tricks are cheating on the amount, species, C/O, prices, policies of goods, taking advantage of the policy exempting traders from the check to smuggle forbidden goods, transporting goods through containers to declare wrongly the name of goods, or not declaring with the customs offices and importing forbidden goods.

Besides aforementioned hot pots, customs officials also detected some enterprises taking advantage of the weakness and inadequacy of the customs laws to smuggle forbidden goods or import goods and declare wrong information on code, tax and species of the goods to officials.

 

In fact, many enterprises often violate customs laws, such as abandoning their business addresses or cancelling checked vouchers. Some others take advantage of the investment environment to cheat on tax such as exporting different goods against declared products; using wrong purpose imported materials; enumerating the amount higher than the real figures; importing supporting materials to do outwork; gathering goods close to the time for departing of the vehicles to create pressure for customs officials.

In order to timely prevent and drive back goods smuggling and trade frauds which has a rising trend in the amount with more and more sophisticated levels, the Vietnam Customs will instruct its units to take a great deal of measures in the coming time. The office will focus its resources on implementing a project to improve risk management systems in the 2007-2010 period; upgrade customs violating information systems in lie with the Customs Law and the Tax Management Law; carrying out projects to build information systems on customers and transport vehicles for leaving the country, entering the country and transiting the country.

 

Besides that, the Vietnam Customs will also implement a project approved by the Ministry of Finance to improve management systems for customs vessels in the 2008-2010 period, boosting cooperation with polices, border polices, market managers, and sea polices as well as international officials.

 

Working teams strive utmost to complete well their basic inspection on their fields of action as well as collect information and date for professional documents to ensure that they have a thorough grasp of the situation to map out investigation plans; providing information promptly to mange risks; actively coordinating, instructing and supporting provincial customs officials to detect effectively smuggling and trade frauds cases; organising combats against smuggling and trade frauds cases; boosting fights against violations of making and using fake customs documents and invoices as well as violations of taking advantage of the policy exempting traders from the check to distribute goods at trade centres, cross-border economic areas, and violations of turning over invoices to obtain value-added tax.

 

Moreover, in the coming time, a joint venture team among the Vietnam Customs under the Ministry of Finance, the Protocol Department under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Road Police Department and the Railway Police Department under the Ministry of Police will be established in a bid to detect objects using tax-exempt cars for wrong purposes.