A major oil smuggling case involving the evasion of 7.14 million yuan in customs taxes reached a verdict in south China's Guangdong Province before the new year when the Guangdong Provincial Supreme Court sentenced Yuan Manzhang to eight years imprisonment for smuggling 90,000 tons of low-sulfur oil.

Yuan declared to the customs that the unit price of the oil was 67 US dollars for the shipment from a Singaporean oil company, instead of the import price of 104 US dollars last February when he was the deputy-director of the Fuxing Oil Refinery in the city of Zhongshan in the province.

Sources with the court said that this was one of the largest oil smuggling case in China, and the smugglers used complicated tactics to evade taxes.

The goods were transported to the port of entry in Huangpu in Guangdong aboard a ship registered in the Marshall Islands, and Fuxing Oil entrusted a shipping company to contact customs for the shipment.

The court has retrieved the goods and fined the Fuxing Oil Refinery 15 million yuan.