Russian Santa Claus residence accused of smuggling reindeer
MOSCOW, February 4 (RIA Novosti) – A Ural Mountain residence of Russia’s equivalent of Santa Claus, Father Frost, has been accused of smuggling reindeer, a media report said Tuesday. A senior veterinary official in the Sverdlovsk Region, where the residence is located, said the outfit’s management illegally transported two reindeer without a proper veterinary inspection and required documentation. Natalya Guryeva told online tabloid Life News that the reindeer were shipped to the region last year to serve as part Father Frost’s entourage at his house outside the regional capital, Yekaterinburg.
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Smuggling cost the Philippines $3 billion in 2011
Illicit capital flows into and out of the Philippines are sapping billions from the real economy, perpetuating corruption, depriving the government of tax revenue, and hurting growth, according to a report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a non-profit group. Most of this money-laundering is facilitated through what’s known as fake trade invoicing, which allows exporters and importers to avoid paying taxes on traded goods. Exporters declare only a fraction of their actual sales to the Philippines customs authority, and hold the payment for the remainder in an offshore bank account to dodge taxes. Importers, meanwhile, underreport the amount they’re bringing into the country, smuggling the rest in effectively duty-free. Understated imports—or, in more everyday language, smuggling—account for most of the fake invoicing, or $2.97 billion; undeclared exports added another $880 million.
http://qz.com/173219/smuggling-cost-the-philippines-3-billion-in-2011/
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Duterte faces Senate today on rice smuggling
DAVAO CITY , Philippines – Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is set to appear before a Senate inquiry on rice smuggling today. Duterte yesterday said he has been invited to attend the hearing of the Senate committee on agriculture to shed light on certain issues affecting the rampant smuggling of rice into the country. Sparks are expected to fly as Justice Secretary Leila de Lima is also expected to attend today’s Senate inquiry. Duterte and De Lima have been at loggerheads over how the investigation on an alleged rice smuggling suspect has been handled by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Duterte lamented how the De Lima has been slow in filing a case against one Davidson Bangayan, also known as David Tan, suspected to be the rice smuggling king of the country. Bureau of Internal Revenue chief Kim Henares had earlier asked Duterte’s help to curb rice smuggling here as the Davao port has been identified as one of the ports of entry of smuggled rice.
http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2014/02/03/1286002/duterte-faces-senate-today-rice-smuggling
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Haryana unearths cough syrup diversion to Bangladesh
Chandigarh, March 2 (IANS) In a crackdown against abuse of medicinal intoxicants, Haryana’s Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) Sunday said it has unearthed illicit diversion and transportation to Bangladesh of huge quantities of a cough syrup made and sold by a multinational pharmaceutical giant. The FDA found out that over two lakh bottles of cough syrup Phensedyl, worth over Rs.1 crore, supplied by pharma manufacturer Abbott Laboratories Ltd to Hisar-based wholesale firm M/s J.P. Medicose, were diverted to Bangladesh illegally by the firm in connivance with another non-functional Bhiwani-based medicine wholesaler.
The consignment of two lakh bottles of the cough syrup was seized by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) Berhampur in West Bengal recently before it could be exported to Bangladesh
Lear MoreMoves to stop illegal cigarette trade boost black market
The Government is missing the target when it comes to reducing tobacco consumption, writes Tony Hickey. I strongly believe that smoking, and the distribution of tobacco products, should be closely regulated by government and State agencies. This is to protect public health, especially that of children, and to safeguard the very considerable revenues that the Exchequer generates. From personal experience, I know that the money made by criminals and subversives from illegal involvement in the tobacco trade is very substantial and continues to grow. In recent years, successive governments have increased the taxes and duties on cigarettes in a laudable effort to reduce smoking. Unfortunately, this policy has had the unintended consequence of driving many cigarette buyers, including children, into the black market where there are numerous suppliers at markets, on the streets and going door-to-door offering cut-price products of sometimes dubious quality, but at much lower prices than legal outlets. The Minister for Finance acknowledged this himself last month when he said, “As we continue to use price to discourage people from smoking I think we will divert more and more of the trade to the illicit trade.”
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Feds seize $21m-worth of fake NFL merchandise
Federal agencies in the US have seized more than $21.6m-worth of counterfeit National Football League (NFL) merchandise in the build-up to the Super Bowl on Sunday. Speaking at an NFL news conference, officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed that more than 50 people had been arrested since the crackdown started in June, while 5,000 websites had been taken down. Operation Team Player targeted international shipments of counterfeit merchandise as they entered the US, and agents swooped on warehouses, stores, flea markets, online vendors and street vendors over the course of the investigation.
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China steps up efforts to combat ivory smuggling
The headline-grabbing haul came from about 700 slaughtered elephants. That is a fraction of the estimated 22,000 animals killed annually in Africa, more than half of which end up in the Chinese market. The Chinese authorities are now responding to international pressure to act against the illegal trade, says Tom Milliken of TRAFFIC in Cambridge, UK, which monitors the wildlife trade. Last year, eight Chinese smugglers were imprisoned for up to 15 years. And this week’s ivory crushing had wide coverage in Chinese media.
“The ivory destroyed included Chinese figurines and sculpture, Buddhist rosaries and Canton magic balls,” says Milliken. “The images will have a powerful impact in a country where the government still shapes public opinion.” They need to. China has a voracious demand for carved ivory products, which are viewed as high-value status symbols by its growing middle class. As a result, elephant poaching in Africa is currently at a 20-year high, reversing the downward trend that followed a worldwide ban on the ivory trade introduced in 1989 by the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Lear MoreIncrease in Cigarettes smuggling
Islamabad: As cigarettes are highly taxed in Pakistan because of their harmful effects on public health, the government is losing billions in revenues that it could otherwise collect on legal import and sale of tobacco products. According to insiders, 200 truckloads of smuggled goods including cigarettes enter the country every day from across the Afghan border. They blame government agencies and customs officials for lack of a strict check and allege the activity goes on with the connivance of some of them. Industry sources confide that almost Rs 50, 000 are given to Afghan and Pakistani officials as bribe for clearing a single consignment. Estimates suggest that Rs18 billion worth of cigarettes is smuggled into the country every year, besides tea worth Rs16 billion, petroleum products valuing Rs22 billion including smuggled LPG, auto parts and vehicles valuing Rs25 billion and other products of over Rs200 billion including cosmetics, clothing, footwear, medicines, spices, juices, electronics, etc. The government is facing the huge loss of revenue apparently in the absence of concrete steps to stem the illegal trade.
http://arynews.tv/en/increase-cigarettes-smuggling/
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Asia-11 study: Pakistan, along with Vietnam, top consumer of illicit cigarettes
KARACHI: Despite all the efforts put in by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), illicit cigarettes still account for one-fourth of the country’s total cigarette consumption, costing the exchequer more than a quarter of a billion dollars in tax losses, according to an international study. In 2012, illicit tobacco trade was 25.4% of the total cigarettes consumed in Pakistan, according to Asia-11: Illicit Tobacco Indicator 2012, an international study compiled by the International Tax and Investment Centre and Oxford Economics.
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Tobacco smuggling gobbles up sales tax revenue
That tobacco products are being smuggled into the country, evading the 100 percent sales tax, is evident from the decrease in sales tax revenue collected at the regional customs office in Phuentsholing. As the busiest border town, most tobacco products enter the country through Phuentsholing. There is no dearth of tobacco products, especially cigarettes and chewing tobacco, but the regional revenue and customs office collected only Nu 234,502 in sales tax in 2013. The year before, they collected Nu 275,506. Incidents of tobacco confiscation, however, have increased in 2013, going by police records.
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