SHANGHAI: Thirteen people have been detained on suspicion of being part of a fur-smuggling operation, the city’s customs police said yesterday.
The suspects are alleged to have evaded tax payments on 30 tons of marten furs imported to Shanghai from Hong Kong between July and October this year. In October alone, the group is believed to have smuggled 81,633 pieces into the city.
The 13 are all employees of Xiaoteng International Trading Co, which is based in Fuzhou, capital of southeast China’s Fujian Province, officials said.
They are believed to have recruited agents in Hong Kong — none of which are implicated in the alleged crime — to source the furs on the international market.
While the customs bureau declined to put a financial value on the scale of the alleged tax fraud — saying only that it was the largest smuggling case involving marten furs ever handled in the city — Shanghai Daily calculated it to be in the millions of US dollars.
A duty of almost 30 percent is payable on all imports of marten furs into the Chinese mainland.
Police said they were alerted to the activities of the group due to the circuitous route taken by their cargo.
In most cases, the marten furs were hidden among consignments of fabric traditionally sold in Taiwan, though the containers arrived in Shanghai from Hong Kong. As a result the containers were subject to tax on the Taiwan fabric, which would not have applied had they been shipped direct from the island.
