Smugglers use high-speed boats to transport goods from Cambodia to Chau Doc city in An Giang province (Photo: tuoitre.vn) HCM City (VNA) - Cross-border smugglers are transporting goods from Cambodia to MekongDelta provinces by using boats during floods.
The wet season insouthern Vietnam has made the task of patrolling the border with Cambodia moredifficult, especially during floods.
The most common smuggledgoods are Thai sugar and foreign cigarettes like Hero and Jet brands.
Cigarettes are among theconsumer goods that have attracted high taxes, including alcohol and beer.
Demand for sweetproducts was especially high during the end of year, and the price differencebetween Vietnamese sugar and Thai sugar contributed to an increase in smugglingactivity.
The three hotspots forsmuggling in the region are the provinces of An Giang, Dong Thap and KienGiang, all of which border Cambodia.
Smugglers often usehigh-speed boats to transport smuggled goods from Cambodia to provinces duringnight when it is too dark to identify the border line clearly.
When the goods cross theborder line, smugglers hire locals as porters to transport the goods toresidential areas.
Tobacco smugglersusually carry about 300 cigarette packages and travel in groups of two to five.
To receive tip-offsabout police activity, the smugglers hire people to keep watch along smugglingroutes.
Sugar smugglers haveestablished fake companies, falsifying documents to make the product appearlegal, and have repackaged the sugar with bags used for legal sugar.
In the third quarter ofthe year, the authorities uncovered 501 cases of smuggling, about 10 percentmore than the third quarter of last year.
The value of totalsmuggled goods was 12 billion VND (530,000 USD), including more than 330,000foreign cigarette packages and 210 tonnes of smuggled sugar, according to AnGiang province’s Steering Committee 389.-VNA
VNA
