Macau Customs Service (SA) officers cracked down on a parallel-trading den at a shop in Heng Long Building on Rua Seis do Bairro Iao Hon yesterday.
In light of the approaching Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays, the Macau Customs Service has stepped up its inspection of industrial buildings and shops in the northern district, customs officer Ip Lap Pun told reporters yesterday, adding that based on intelligence that it had received, the Macau Customs Service identified the shop in Heng Long Building as a suspected venue used for storing parallel-trading goods, and arrested the shop’s owner.
Ip made the remarks after inviting the media to witness customs officers raiding the parallel-trading den.
According to Ip, the 29-year-old male suspect, surnamed Cheong, is a local resident.
Ip said that after putting the shop under surveillance for several days, the Macau Customs Service raided the suspected parallel-trading den, where customs officers seized about 200 packets of bird’s nest weighing around 500 grammes each, 150 packets of shark fin weighing nearly 2.5 kilogrammes each, over 60 used mobile phones and more than 20 used electronic products, all worth around 2.5 million patacas in total.
Ip also said that as Cheong failed to show any legal business licence documents for the shop, or documents declaring the import and export of the seized goods, the Macau Customs Service assumes that the suspect illegally hired people as parallel traders and asked them to carry a small quantity of goods each time from Macau to the mainland in order to evade customs checks, tactics known as “ants moving home” in Chinese.
Under questioning yesterday, Cheong, who violated the External Trade Law, admitted that he had asked parallel traders to smuggle goods to the mainland from Macau, Ip said.
Parallel trading is known as “soi hak” (水客) in Cantonese.
Confiscated contraband worth around 2.5 million patacas is displayed at a parallel-trading den yesterday, in Heng Long Building on Rua Seis do Bairro Iao Hon.
– Photo: Yuki Lei
