Macau Customs Service (SA) officers raided a parallel-trading den yesterday at a shop in U I Kok Building in Toi Sa district, where they seized 5,600 beauty products worth about 1.9 million patacas and arrested a 43-year-old man allegedly involved in the den’s operation.
The suspect failed to provide import licences and certificates of origin of the goods stored at the shop.
A senior customs officer told reporters after inviting the media to witness customs officers busting the parallel-trading den in the residential building that the officers caught a male non-resident worker (NRW) from the mainland yesterday at the Barrier Gate checkpoint, suspected of involvement in parallel trading and on whom a number of beauty products were found.
Under questioning, the “parallel trader” admitted that he had received 130 yuan each time for taking the goods from the den to the mainland, according to the officer.
Parallel traders are known as “soi hak” (“water goods travellers”) in Cantonese jargon.
Customs officers were dispatched yesterday afternoon to inspect the shop, where they arrested the suspect, who admitted to using the “ants-moving-home” approach to smuggle the goods to the mainland with the help of parallel traders, i.e., they picked up a small quantity of goods each time and smuggled them to Zhuhai via the Barrier Gate border checkpoint in order to evade the two cities’ customs checks, the officer said.
The senior officer told the media that the Customs Service believed that the den had been in operation for three months.
He pointed out that there has recently been a decrease in the number of parallel-trading activities and related complaints against parallel traders in Macau, adding that he believes that the drop is related to the easing of COVID-19 travel restrictions in neighbouring regions.
Beauty products worth 1.9 million patacas are displayed by the Macau Customs Service in a parallel-trading den in Toi San district yesterday. – Photo courtesy of TDM
