Gongbei’s Customs Administration announced in a statement yesterday that early this week it busted two cases in which the travellers attempted to smuggle bottles of Chinese spirits into Zhuhai by hiding them inside shower gel bottles that had been cut open at the bottom, as well as one case in which bottles of Western-style spirits were hidden in a pushchair.
The first two cases were detected on Sunday, while the third case was busted the next day. The three travellers, two men and a woman, are mainlanders.
In the first case, a man surnamed Zhang carrying four bottles of shower gel was walking through the “nothing to declare” channel in the Gongbei checkpoint. Customs officers intercepted Zhang after spotting abnormal images in his luggage on an X-ray machine, the statement said.
The customs officers saw that the bottom of the four bottles of shower gel had been cut open, and four Maotai bottles were hidden inside, the statement, adding that the Maotai bottles have the height and diameter around the same as the shower gel bottles.
In the second case which was discovered later the same day, Gongbei customs officers intercepted a woman surnamed Pang who attempted to smuggle four Maotai bottles into Zhuhai with the same modus operandi, the statement said.
In the third case which was busted on Monday, a man surnamed Li was pushing a pushchair through the “nothing to declare” channel at the Gongbei checkpoint. When customs officers intercepted Li they found six bottles of Martell hidden in a storage space in the pushchair and three such bottles in his backpack, the statement said.
The officers also found one such bottle hidden inside a pink doll after unzipping it, the statement said. A total of 10 bottles of Martell were seized from the man.
This undated handout photo provided by the Gongbei customs yesterday shows the four Maotai bottles – together with the four empty shower gel bottles that was cut open at the bottom – that a traveller attempted to smuggle into Zhuhai via the checkpoint early this week.
