TOKYO: Five Japanese and three Chinese men were arrested Thursday for allegedly smuggling in 206 kilograms of gold by a small ship to a port in southwestern Japan, making it the largest case of illegal gold importing, law enforcement authorities said.
The local customs house is verifying the authenticity of the ship’s load seized at the Nagoya port in Karatsu city, Saga Prefecture on Wednesday. It was not immediately known if the suspects have admitted to the charge.
The largest-ever gold seizure in the nation is 130 kg smuggled by air to Osaka’s Kansai International Airport in February 2015, according to the government.
The eight men arrested on suspicion of breaching the customs law include Yasuaki Saito, 49, from Iki in the neighboring prefecture of Nagasaki, and Kenichi Kinoshita, 65, from Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan, according to the police and the local coast guard.
The authorities received information that a suspicious ship once registered in Aomori Prefecture, northeastern Japan, was berthed at a port in Nagasaki. The 19-ton vessel had once been registered as a fishing boat in Aomori, according to investigators.
