The Macau Customs Service (SA) busted a parallel-trading den yesterday in a unit on the third floor of Keck Seng Industrial Building on Avenida de Venceslau de Morais, where its officers seized nearly 200 old bicycles, including 15 electric bikes, with an estimated total value of about 23,000 patacas.
José Pou Ka Meng, acting chief of the Operational Management Department, told reporters yesterday, after customs officers had raided the parallel-trading den, that the Macau Customs Service had recently noticed “lawbreakers” passing through the Barrier Gate checkpoint during peak times to smuggle old bicycles to the mainland, adding that after more than a month of investigations, the officers identified the unit at the industrial building from where the parallel traders were operating.
According to Pou, customs officers conducted a raid at 1 p.m. yesterday on the unit, where they arrested four mainlanders holding travel permits to visit Macau, comprising a male in charge of operations at that time, as well as two males and a female working as parallel traders, aged between 38 and 50.
Under questioning, the three parallel traders admitted that they were paid 110 yuan and 130 yuan for smuggling a bicycle or an electric bike respectively from Macau to the mainland, Pou noted.
Pou said that the trio have been referred to the Labour Bureau for breaching the local labour law, while the person in charge of the parallel-trading operation at the time of the raid has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) for wrongful employment.
Pou said the Macau Customs Service believe that the group ran its parallel-trading operations for two months, and that the old bicycles were imported from Japan.
Nearly 200 confiscated old bikes are displayed at a parallel-trading den yesterday, at Keck Seng Industrial Building on Avenida de Venceslau de Morais.
– Photo: Yuki Lei
