News

Fishing vessels smuggling taxed goods

June 17, 2018 9:20 pm

The Fiji Revenue and Customs Service is concerned with the number of fishing vessels that continue to smuggle highly taxed goods such as alcohol and cigarettes as well as foreign currencies into the country.

Last year, Revenue and Customs searched 68 fishing vessels berthed at the Suva Harbour.

The rummage exercise was conducted after Customs Officers had profiled the vessels for a number of reasons and considered that they may be a high border risk or may be breaching legislative requirements.

Article continues after advertisement

The teams also found undeclared currencies, environmentally damaging gas which is banned in Fiji and most surprisingly 8 live puppies.

26 of the 68 searches resulted in an anomaly being detected.

Chief Executive, Visvanath Das says in the 57 rummages that were carried out on fishing vessels from January, 10 anomalies were discovered.

These detections included high volumes of undeclared cigarettes and alcohol as well as other dutiable items.