Damascus-SANA
The General Directorate of Customs and its regional directorates and secretariats worked intensively during 2021 in combating smuggling and protecting the local product from the negative economic repercussions of the smuggled materials competing for this product and the severe damage it causes to the national economy, thus achieving additional returns and revenues for the state’s public treasury.
The value of the fines collected by the Damascus Customs Directorate for the customs smuggling cases investigated in its secretariats and the customs police in Damascus, which have been settled since the beginning of the year to date, amounted to about 20 billion Syrian pounds, knowing that the number of these cases amounted to about 1,600 cases.
In a statement to SANA’s representative, the Director of Damascus Customs, Qutaiba Khalouf, explained that the directorate, through its affiliated secretariats and the customs police in Damascus, continued to carry out its tasks in organizing import, export and transit data, protecting national markets and products from smuggled goods, and stricter checks and daily inspection of customs data and imports at the detection departments and their employees. .
The seized smuggled materials varied according to the cases investigated according to the Director of Damascus Customs, to include cars, bales, smoke, diesel, tools, medical supplies, fabrics, electrical tools, foodstuffs and medicines, indicating that these materials are of foreign origin.
In the Latakia Customs Directorate, 859 customs cases have been registered since the beginning of the year to date through the work of the Lattakia Customs Secretariat and the customs officer in the governorate. The fines collected from these cases exceeded 4 billion Syrian pounds, and the uncollected 8 billion Syrian pounds for the cases that were referred to the judiciary for legal pursuit.
In a similar statement, the Director of Latakia Customs Maher Hassan indicated that the goods seized in smuggling cases included shoes, clothing, materials not declared in the customs declarations, tourist cars, car parts, various foodstuffs, drugs, fireworks, and others for children, and others. Lattakia, the movement of goods entering and exiting the customs precincts of import, export and transit in terms of value, type, commercial designation and the declared value in accordance with the customs law, in a manner that ensures the correct payment of fees according to the percentages specified in the customs tariff schedule.
As for the Aleppo Customs Directorate and the customs officer in the governorate, the number of cases investigated since the beginning of the year to date has reached about 1,700, and the fines collected have exceeded 17 billion Syrian pounds, according to what the Director of Aleppo Customs Yassin Jawad confirmed in a statement to SANA.
The goods and materials seized in smuggling cases included, according to the horse, threads, clothes, shoes, makeup, knitted fabrics, mobile devices, various spare parts, children's toys, metal pipes, electrical parts, smoke, diesel, raw materials and food of foreign origin, noting that most of these goods are of Turkish origin and some of them are unknown.
Jawad explained that the Aleppo Customs Secretariat is carrying out its work in inspecting the seized seized by the customs police in Aleppo and other authorities, collecting the fines due when the settlement contract is duly established, organizing the prosecution documents and referring it to the Directorate to follow up the prosecution in the event of non-settlement, indicating that the value of the organized customs data amounted to more than 4 Billions of Syrian pounds.
Waseem Al-Adawi
Follow Sana's news on Telegram https://t.me/SyrianArabNewsAgency
