ZHEJIANG: A court in Ningbo has fined a man 550,000 yuan (HK$696,150) for smuggling luxury bags into China from overseas.
The man was also sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for two years, by the city’s intermediate court, for smuggling bags worth more than 1.2 million yuan and evading more than 350,000 yuan in tax over about two years.
He established a shop in Haishu district in 2009 and two years later started buying luxury brands such as Prada and Louis Vuitton.
He hired about 10 frequent travellers, including businessmen and students studying aboard, as “overseas buyers”. They either mailed the goods to him or took them back to China in person but without declaring the items at customs.
One of his buyers was caught returning from South Korea in May, 2013, with five Prada bags worth tens of thousands of yuan – well above the duty-free limit of 5,000 yuan.
