Chapter 43 Chapter 43 The Cigarette Smuggling Case Solved

In order to completely nail the key smugglers of the Lai Changxing smuggling group to the pillar of historical shame, the leader of the smuggling investigation team reported to the General Administration of Customs for approval, and the cigarette team sent an investigation and evidence collection team to investigate overseas.This is something that Lai Changxing's smuggling group never expected, and it is also a big "loophole" that they are unable to plug. Futian Shipping Co., Ltd. rented a ship loaded with empty containers for false export. In the declaration materials submitted to the port units, many voyages indicated that the "port of shipment" was "Manila" and "Singapore", and the "country of consumption" was " Philippines”, “Singapore”.However, the collected ship voyage information records that many voyages have been transited or terminated in Hong Kong.

The investigation team to Hong Kong took a large amount of information to be investigated and went overseas to check the loading and unloading conditions of those ships in Hong Kong on their voyages.As a result, many data show that the actual destination of 17 voyages of 8 ships including Haixiang NO2 is Hong Kong, and all the unloaded containers in Hong Kong are empty containers. At the same time, another overseas evidence collection team went to Busan Port and Masan Port in South Korea to investigate what kind of goods were loaded on the "Suchang" and "Qinghua" ships.With the cooperation and support of the Korean Customs Service, Busan Customs and Mashan Customs, they directly retrieved the evidence that the "Suchang" and "Qinghua" ships loaded cigarettes on board for five voyages.The customs officer of Mashan Customs also confirmed that there is no need to declare to the customs when goods are shipped from the Korean bonded warehouse to berth at Mashan Port, which is the practice stipulated by the Korean Customs Law.But the ships they saw at the pier to China's Xiamen port were loaded with cigarettes.

The significance of overseas evidence is that it corroborates with domestic documentary evidence and witness testimony obtained through hardships, and confirms the authenticity and reliability of domestic evidence. The 19 case investigators of the cigarette group have gone through 102 days of difficult evidence collection since September 7, 1999, and obtained information from customs, Sinotrans, foreign agents, commodity inspection, port supervision, docks, shipping companies and other departments and enterprises involved in the case , repeatedly compared thousands of files and tens of thousands of documents from 63 voyages, investigated more than 30 companies, consulted 1,770 comparative files, questioned more than 200 suspected smugglers and insiders, and made more than 300 inquiries And the conversation records, and finally filed more than 100 volumes of evidence materials, and finally found out the whole picture of cigarette smuggling by Lai Changxing smuggling group in Xiamen area, and verified the whole process of smuggling cigarettes on 63 voyages.

After the cigarette case was transferred to the trial team, after more than 4 months of supplementary investigation, it successfully entered the stage of transfer for prosecution. On November 8, 2000, 19 of the first trial convicts were sentenced. On February 27, 2001, many more criminals in the second batch of trials were severely punished.Six people including Huang Shanying were sentenced to death (including reprieve) for the crime of smuggling cigarettes, and another six people were sentenced to life imprisonment. Lai Changxing’s criminal group registered Xiamen Yuanhua Import and Export Company in order to allow a large amount of smuggled cigarettes to enter legally. From March 1999 to May 1999, Zeng Mingna was in charge of funding the Yuanhua smuggling group, and Zeng Mingyu was in charge of organizing the supply of cigarettes abroad. He also contacted the shippers who needed to smuggle cigarettes into the country. Wu Ronghui was in charge of shipping and used the chartered ships to transport cigarettes from Masan, Busan, South Korea, Singapore, and Port Klang, Malaysia to the territory.After the ship carrying smuggled cigarettes arrived at Haitian Wharf in Xiamen Port, Shao Jiaxi instructed Chen Tiande to go to the wharf to go through the formalities of handing over the imported containers, and transport the imported containers directly to Haixin Yard.

After the containers carrying smuggled cigarettes arrived at the Haixin storage yard, Hou Xiaohu and Hou Zhanwu were responsible for the customs clearance of the smuggled goods.Before the customs inspected the goods in the imported containers, the customs officers of the Haixin supervision point of the Dongdu Office of Xiamen Customs and the Tongan Office of Xiamen Customs, which were bought by Hou Xiaohu and Hou Zhanwu in collusion, determined in advance the container numbers that the customs would randomly check. After that, cut off the seals of the imported heavy boxes to be inspected by the customs, take out the smuggled cigarettes, put them into the prepared empty containers, and load the goods that have been prepared in advance and match the names of the counterfeit goods into the customs to be inspected After being sealed with the seal provided by Hou Zhanwu, the container will be inspected by the customs.

The above-mentioned Yuanhua smuggling group smuggled more than 1.64 million boxes of cigarettes and evaded a total of 8.8 billion yuan in taxes payable.