Grain smuggling transferred to the southwest land border

The reporter recently visited the border area of Guangxi and found that since last year, with the customs and other relevant departments stepping up their crackdown, smuggling on the frontline of the border between China and Vietnam in Guangxi has been effectively curbed. Among the smuggling cases investigated and dealt with, there has been a marked increase in the number of grain smuggling cases dominated by rice, with obvious characteristics of scale and specialization of grain smuggling, and new trends such as the transfer of water to land.

Major grain smuggling cases have been solved at the border of Guangxi

According to the Fangchenggang City Intermediate people's Court, the Fangchenggang Intermediate people's Court recently concluded a major rice smuggling case. Wu Wenguo and other criminals involved in rice smuggling at the Sino-Vietnamese border were punished by law, with a maximum sentence of 12 years' imprisonment and a fine of 8 million yuan.

It is reported that Wu Wenguo, the general manager of Dongxing Weiguo Agricultural and sideline products Co., Ltd., conspired with Zhong Peilin and others to buy rice from Vietnam at a price of less than 3400 yuan per ton and secretly transport rice from non-customs terminals without going through import formalities and tax receipts. Some of the smuggled rice is then shipped to Weiguo for packaging and sold to the domestic market at higher prices.

According to accounting, between June 2012 and April 2014, Wu Wenguo, Zhong Peilin, Tang Jie, Chen Taiwu, Huang Yingwei and Wu Weiwei smuggled more than 10000 tons of rice into the country and evaded more than 20 million yuan in tax payable. The court ruled on the above six people in accordance with the law.

The reporter combed and found that since 2014, law enforcement departments have cracked a number of major and serious cases of rice smuggling in Dongxing City of Fangchenggang City, Longzhou County of Chongzuo City, and Jingxi County of Baise City, and seized as many as 100 cases of rice smuggling. More than 10 rice smuggling gangs have been eliminated, and some cases are worth more than 100 million yuan.

Professional gangs go wild for profits

According to the analysis of some anti-smuggling law enforcement cadres on the border between China and Vietnam in Guangxi, the national customs have deployed a special "green wind" campaign to crack down on the smuggling of agricultural products since last year, but the actual situation also shows that the situation of grain smuggling along the border between China and Vietnam is still grim.

From the perspective of smuggling channels, the cases seized at present are mainly cases of smuggling in non-customs places, and breaking up into parts, changing equipment and changing appearance, and collectivization operation are the common characteristics of these grain smuggling. Most of them are organized and premeditated smuggling crimes carried out under the planning and control of professional smuggling gangs, and the integration of purchase, transportation and sale is realized through collectivization operation.

According to a relevant person in charge of Nanning Customs, the smuggled rice on the Sino-Vietnamese border mainly comes from Vietnam, and lawbreakers first order goods from abroad, usually smuggling into the country through ant-moving "breaking up into pieces" bypassing the customs, and then waiting for the opportunity to be transported to the domestic circulation market by changing packaging, mixing domestic rice, hidden hoarding, and so on.

"interest drive is the main reason. As far as we know, compared with domestic rice, rice from Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries can be cropped three times a year in many places, with relatively low production costs and labor costs. on the whole, the price difference per ton is about 4-1000 yuan, which has the advantage of high output and low cost. " Qin Zelu, president of Guangxi Grain Industry Association, said.

According to the Fangchenggang Intermediate people's Court, in the rice smuggling case tried by Wu Wenguo and others, after buying rice at a low price from Vietnam, the defendant arranged for personnel to guarantee the goods at a price of not more than 380 yuan per tonne, and hired dump truck drivers to go to non-customs terminals to ship smuggled rice and "watch the road." Usually, the price of rice bought by the defendant in Vietnam is basically about 3000 yuan / ton, and the price sold in China is about 4000 yuan / ton.

In addition, there are many border smuggling channels, so it is difficult to investigate and deal with non-customs places. The reporter saw in some border villages along the border counties and cities such as Pingxiang and Longzhou that China and Vietnam are connected by water and land along the border, with high mountains and dense forests, numerous footpaths, and the lack of natural barriers and physical isolation facilities in most places. in addition, personnel exchanges along the border between China and Vietnam are becoming more and more frequent. It is reported that in the previous cases of rice smuggling seized by Nanning Customs, the proportion of smuggling in non-customs areas was more than 90%.

Anti-smuggling needs to further improve the cooperation mechanism

The reporter learned that the overall situation of preventing and controlling grain smuggling at the border is still grim, and some new trends have emerged recently.

First, grain smuggling activities such as rice and corn began to shift to the southwest border of Guangxi. Dongxing Beilun River was once an active smuggling zone in the country. After in-depth crackdown and comprehensive regulation since 2012, especially on rice, sugar, frozen products in epidemic areas, and so on, the order of high-standard control areas along the Beilun River has been significantly improved. A person in charge of the Dongxing Customs Anti-smuggling Branch said that in order to evade the crackdown, smuggling activities continue to "drift" and "wander" in the border areas, looking for opportunities to break through, and there has been a new trend that smuggling activities have begun to drift to the borders of Chongzuo and Baise in Guangxi. These places have high mountains and dense forests and many passages, which make them more difficult to prevent.

Second, smugglers in some border areas use machinery to dig channels and connect national defense patrol roads to carry out smuggling, which reflects that smuggling activities are rampant. Wei Jiayun, deputy secretary of the political and legal Committee of the Pingxiang Municipal CPC Committee, told reporters that since the second half of last year, lawbreakers have dug passages from the Vietnamese side to connect our national defense patrol roads with forklifts and excavators, and have repeatedly dug through them after they were stopped. As the defense patrol road is connected to domestic roads, it will be more convenient once the passage is connected to smuggling activities.

Some grass-roots cadres reported that at present, the governments of all border counties (cities) have set up anti-smuggling offices to coordinate and coordinate the efforts of all parties to carry out anti-smuggling work, but if coordination is weak, anti-smuggling will easily become a "anti-smuggling work." At present, while continuing to carry out special crackdown on the smuggling of rice and other agricultural products, we also need to speed up the promotion of departmental, regional cooperation and cross-border joint crackdown on smuggling, improve relevant safeguard measures, and establish and improve a long-term mechanism for the prevention and control of border smuggling, so as to cure both the symptoms and the root causes.