Vietnam cracks down on illegal trade Vietnam customs agents, anti-smuggling officials and traders are painting a picture of a booming illegal trade of meat along Vietnam’s border with China— increasing concerns about contamination of the food chain. China is the world's top meat consumer; however, demand has outpaced domestic production over recent years, creating an opportunity for the underground meat industry to cash in as they illegally run huge amounts of beef duty free across the Vietnam-China border. “But the problem isn’t just limited to meat,” said Nguyen Ngoc Tuc, deputy head of Vietnam Customs, adding that it extends to a vast array of other items such as petroleum, tires, drugs and bootlegged beverages.   Tuc said in 2014 law enforcement uncovered 18,448 instances of people trying to bring unauthorized items into the country, impounding goods valued at roughly US$18.5 million for which 9,670 cases were referred over to the justice department for prosecution. All told the fines imposed on these offenders who were trying to pull the wool over the eyes of law enforcement officials generated a hefty record high US$4 million in revenue for the state coffers.   Van Quy, deputy head of the Vietnam Customs Anti-Smuggling Investigation Department said that since 2012, his agency has seized millions of litres of petroleum products and prosecuted dozens of cases. The department has also uncovered numerous violations of petrol related scams involving traders falsifying the dates of bills of lading or altering them through complicated schemes to evade import duties. Quy said because most of these fraudulent practices are practically impossible to detect and much harder to prosecute his agency was formed specifically to coordinate the government’s effort to target this type of crime. Despite the combined efforts of customs officers, border guards and maritime police we have yet to successfully crack any smuggling rings of any significant size and bring the offenders to justice but we most certainly have made a dent in reducing the illegal practices. “Smugglers are now seen resorting to innovative techniques to sneak items into Vietnam through major airports around the country,” said Do Thanh Quang, manager at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport Customs Branch in Ho Chi Minh City. Tan Son Nhat airport is the most important gateway for foreign travellers and goods entering the country and over recent years has become one of the black-market hot spots ripe with traffickers of all kinds of illicit items, Quang added. With 202 international flights and 27,000 passengers per day, nearly nine million passengers pass through the gates of the airport annually, presenting a formidable challenge to law enforcement. Quang said over the past five years, the Customs Branch at the Tan Son Nhat Airport has busted 2,282 international trafficking operations, commandeering an estimated US$32 million of goods and has smashed 43 major drug syndicates. “However, law enforcement officials working at the airport inspect just a fraction of the cargo and passenger luggage passing through the busy international hub,” Quang said— providing ample opportunities for smuggling to go undetected. Currently we examine about 7% of the parcels passing through the airport and we have to find better approaches through the use of improved technology or methodology to increase the coverage. This is just one more difficulty the custom sector faces in its efforts to intensify the fight against contraband, most especially in the battle to disrupt drug trafficking rings and stop the entry of illegal drugs flowing into the country, Quang stressed. Nguyen Van Can deputy head of Vietnam Customs echoing the sentiments of others emphasised that transnational smuggling has become a critical component of the supply chain, especially the trafficking of prohibited goods from South America to Asia. Crooks have become more imaginative and creative in ways to ‘cook the books’ and falsify the accounting paperwork to escape having to pay import duties and law enforcement needs to change to adapt and meet the challenge. In many cases, goods are shipped directly from South America to Vietnam but the fake accounting paperwork such as bills of lading and invoices show the items as coming from another country where the import duties are less. Other cases recently uncovered involved automobile tires that received favourable import duties because they were declared as raw materials for manufacturing but then were sold on the retail market – netting the criminals huge profits. There were an estimated 500 instances of the latter scam discovered in the first six months of 2015 Can said, adding that currently 300 of them are winding their way through the criminal justice system. VOV