The Shenzhen People's Procuratorate announced that they will soon
begin legal proceedings in what will be one of the largest
smuggling cases in the city's history.
The Guangzhou-based Guangzhou Daily reported Tuesday that
the Huiwei Industrial and Trade Co-operation company in Shenzhen
was found to have smuggled a total of 760,000 tons of refined oil
from June 1996 to June 1998, thus evading payment of 2.7 billion
yuan (US$325 million) in taxes.
So
far, six suspects involved in the smuggling have been arrested,
according to the report.
The six suspects, formally employed by Huiwei and another company
in Huizhou, Guangdong,
were charged with smuggling oil through the Huizhou Port in
collaboration with local customs officials.
The case was first disclosed in August 2000, when procuratorate
authorities were investigating the corruption case of Zhao Yucun,
former head of the Shenzhen Customs.
A
former director of the Investigation Bureau of Shanghai Customs, Ji
Yongzhen, was sentenced Tuesday by Shanghai No 1 Intermediate
People's Court to life imprisonment for taking bribes while in
Shanghai.
The court decided to confiscate Ji's personal property, valued at
200,000 yuan (US$24,000), as well as 3 million yuan (US$360,000) in
property which Ji could not reasonably account for.
In
the case of Zhao Yucun in Shenzhen, Zhao, along with his wife and
daughter, has allegedly taken more than 9.17 million yuan (US$1.1
million) worth of goods and cash in bribes since 1995. He was
expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and sacked from
his job in August, 2000.
It
is reported that Zhao, then head of the Shenzhen Kowloon Customs,
helped Yang Gaiqing, general manager of Huiwei, set up a public
tax-free warehouse in Huizhou Port in 1996. Yang then used the
warehouse to smuggle over 420,000 tons of refined oil.
Yang has been arrested on bribery charges.
State Councilor Wu Yi Tuesday at a national customs conference
urged customs officials to improve their efficiency and
law-enforcement abilities.
She said that customs officials should make more efforts to adapt
to the new situation in China as a result of its accession to the
World Trade Organization.
(China Daily January 17,
2002)