Hong Kong Customs seizes 27 mln USD suspected smuggled goods

HONG KONG, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong Customs on Friday said that it has detected two cases with suspected smuggled goods worth about 211 million Hong Kong dollars (about 27 million U.S. dollars) in total.

A Customs spokesperson said that through intelligence analysis and risk assessment, the Customs suspected that river trade vessels were used to smuggle goods to the Chinese mainland and thus formulated strategies to combat related activities.

In recent operations, two river trade vessels departing from Hong Kong and respectively bound for Macao and Guangzhou were selected for inspection. Customs officers onboard the vessels found large batches of suspected smuggled goods.

The contrabands include over 130,000 hard disks, about 200,000 electronic product accessories, about 160,000 cigarettes, about 13,000 bottles of health products, and about 3,000 boxes of pharmaceutical products.

Related investigations are underway. The Customs will keep up its enforcement action and continue to combat sea smuggling activities through proactive risk management and intelligence-based enforcement strategies, along with mounting targeted anti-smuggling operations, the spokesperson said.