21,000 tonnes of smuggled rice verified by customs last year; some grain farmers buy low and sell high
Yunnan: Building bridges and using boats to brazenly smuggle rice into the country
CCTV Finance (Reporter Yi Zeke) Yesterday, the General Administration of Customs publicly announced the results of the 2014 national customs "Green Wind" special campaign against the smuggling of agricultural products. In 2014, customs authorities nationwide filed and investigated 13,316 agricultural product smuggling cases, with a case value of 44.898 billion yuan and suspected tax evasion of 9.282 billion yuan. Among these, in the fight against rice smuggling, 467 criminal and administrative rice smuggling cases were seized throughout the year, with a case value of 1.255 billion yuan, involving 466 million yuan in taxes, and 210,100 tonnes of smuggled rice verified.
On an evening last September, the reporter, together with anti-smuggling officers, captured these images during an investigation along the China-Vietnam border at Hekou, Yunnan. At the scene, at least more than two hundred Vietnamese border residents were busily at work, with bag after bag of goods being continuously carried across the river into China. About a minute and a half after the reporter started filming, these two border residents suddenly realized something was wrong; their first reaction was that China Customs had come to investigate smuggling. After they steered their boat away, the carrying team that had just been working in such a tense and orderly manner quickly scattered like birds and beasts.
If these Vietnamese border residents still have some fear of China Customs anti-smuggling officers, then the smugglers at a China-Myanmar border location in Ruili can truly be described as brazen. Even in broad daylight, the smuggling here did not pause in the slightest. Each ferry boat carried a truck loaded with smuggled rice, quickly sneaking the rice into the country.
Kunming Customs anti-smuggling police: Those trucks are all suspected of smuggling. They directly use ferries, pull the vehicles onto the ferries, pull the vehicles onto the ferries, and dock on the other side, which shortens the transport time and also shortens our investigation time.
Family gang operates by remote control; multiple gangs and multiple routes carry out smuggling
⟦NL> Not only is the smuggling into the country carried out in a short time, making investigation very difficult. Anti-smuggling officers also told us that these smugglers are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with customs anti-smuggling officers every day. As long as a vehicle or person suspected of being customs appears nearby, dedicated lookouts will pass on the information, and these smugglers will quickly withdraw. So how do customs officers carry out investigations?
In fact, as early as the beginning of April 2014, the Yunnan Customs Anti-Smuggling Bureau obtained clues about this smuggling gang from multiple channels. However, the gang hiding behind those who carried out the smuggling never showed itself for a long time. In order to clarify the smuggling chain, the reporter followed customs anti-smuggling officers in tracking and investigating these smuggling vehicles.
The freight yard located in Kaiyuan, Yunnan, is a place that one of the routes must pass through. This is because the drivers all need to go over the weighbridge here and receive payment based on weight. From overseas supply, covert transport into the country, and domestic transport, multiple links are all operated by completely different gangs with a division of labor, and the core members of the gang behind them never appeared. However, relying on these weighbridge slips that could be exchanged for commissions, anti-smuggling officers found clues.
Li Mao, deputy captain of the direct team of the Kunming Customs Anti-Smuggling Bureau: A family-style smuggling gang led by someone surnamed Yang, mainly smuggling grain such as rice and corn / operating by remote control from behind the scenes, and the members of this gang have family members as its backbone. There are father, mother, son, and daughter-in-law.
On September 18, 2014, Kunming Customs dispatched more than 400 anti-smuggling police officers to carry out simultaneous arrests in four places: Dali, Hekou, Ruili, and Kunming, capturing 15 main criminal suspects including Yang in one operation, and seizing about 320 tonnes of smuggled rice and 42 tonnes of corn at the scene. According to verification, since 2012, Yang's gang had long organized sources of goods such as rice and corn in Myanmar and Vietnam, and by hiring border residents and other methods, smuggled grain into the country at non-designated crossing points such as Ruili and Hekou, then sent it via railway stations within the province to 13 provinces and cities including Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, and Hubei for sale and profit. In total, about more than 40,000 tonnes of grain were smuggled, with a case value of about 150 million yuan.
Smuggled rice harms national food security
We just saw that much of the smuggled rice flowed to grain-producing areas such as Hunan and Hubei. Why do these places, which produce rice locally, still need to buy smuggled rice from outside?
Because Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Myanmar have abundant sunshine, most places can grow two or even three crops of rice, and combined with their low labor costs, their rice prices themselves are relatively low. In our country, because of the grain purchase and storage system and grain price subsidy policies, the price gap between domestic and foreign rice has been further magnified.
Zhan Li, director of the Kunming Customs Anti-Smuggling Bureau: It should average around two yuan. It depends on the quality and variety of the grain. Generally speaking, there is a price gap of between one yuan and three yuan (per kilogram).
Judging from the circumstances of the cases, in the major grain-producing areas to which these smuggled rice flowed, grain farmers all sold the grain they grew at the price subsidized by the state, while at the same time buying lower-priced smuggled rice from the market for consumption. Some even directly bought this kind of smuggled rice at a low price and then sold it at a high price.
Wang Shihai of the Macro-Control Department of the State Administration of Grain: It has caused a relatively large impact on the domestic grain market, increased the downward pressure on domestic grain market prices, and within a certain scope led to varying degrees of inversion between grain prices in domestic raw grain and stored grain producing areas and sales areas.
Under the long-term national food security strategy, the total supply and demand of grain such as rice in our country is basically balanced. The massive influx of smuggled rice that has not undergone inspection and quarantine will not only break this balance, making grain price subsidies to farmers ineffective, but even bring serious hidden dangers to the safety of consumers' dining tables.
Zhu Feng, deputy director of the Anti-Smuggling Bureau of the General Administration of Customs: It endangers the vital interests of the broad masses of farmers. This illegally smuggled agricultural product, by evading the supervision of relevant customs departments, poses serious food hygiene and safety hidden dangers and constitutes a serious threat to the food safety of the people.