上海日报:Oil smuggling on the rise

Ke Jiayun

21:13 UTC+8, 2019-07-22

More than 90 percent of smuggling cases in regions without customs, including outside territorial waters, handled by the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People's Court in the past four years were related to oil products, the court said on Monday.

The court began to deal with the city's smuggling cases in March 2015. By June this year, it had accepted 51 criminal cases of smuggling in regions without customs and resolved 48 of them.

Thanks to tougher crackdown, the local anti-smuggling authorities have managed to seize more smugglers 29 cases were accepted last year and 12 in the first half of this year.

In one case, a captain and a sailor who smuggled more than 700 tons of fuel oil and evaded over 2 million yuan (US$290,702) in tax were sentenced to up to five and a half years in jail.

In August last year, Lin was employed as the captain of a vessel and hired Qiu as a sailor. On August 6, they departed from Chongming District and reached a designated place outside the country's territorial waters on August 8. They took fuel oil from a foreign vessel berthed there and then made a detour to avoid being detected by customs. However, they were caught by police when they sailed back to Chongming the next day.

Lin was given five and a half years behind bars and fined 800,000 yuan while Qiu got two and a half years and a fine of 500,000 yuan. The fuel oil was confiscated and the illegal gains retrieved.

In another case in June last year, three men who smuggled more than 550 tons of fuel oil and evaded nearly 1.6 million yuan in tax were jailed for up to four years with the fuel oil and two vessels they used seized by local customs.

Wang had been employed to rent a vessel and serve as captain. On June 10, he set sail from Fujian Province and went outside territorial waters to take fuel oil from another ship. Two others, Hu and Wu, were told by their boss to take care of the goods on Wang's vessel.

On the night of June 12, Wang sailed back and contacted another accomplice Liu to get some oil from his ship. While Liu was taking the fuel to his ship, their activities were discovered by police. Wang, Wu and Liu were captured at the scene while Hu fled on a small boat. Hu was traced by police in Jiangsu Province on September 11.

Hu was then given four years in jail while Wang and Wu got three and half years. Liu was sentenced to 10 months in prison.

Source: SHINE   Editor: Yang Meiping

 

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