Prosecutors record major increase in smuggling cases

The No. 3 branch of the Shanghai People's Procuratorate filed charges against 493 people in 185 smuggling cases last year, up 66 percent and 54 percent, respectively, from 2018, prosecutors declared in a white paper released on Tuesday.

Most of the cases were transferred by the customs' anti-smuggling bureau while the rest were from maritime police. Twenty-two of the suspects were foreigners and another is a Taiwanese, according to the document.

Major crimes committed include the smuggling of drugs, rare animal products and common goods.

According to prosecutors, frozen meat, sea sand and coal become smugglers' new targets, while oil and sugar were still the products being smuggled most often.

Last year the smuggling of frozen meat, including steak, pig trotters and chicken feet, occurred in 10 cases involving 39 suspects, as recorded by the branch.

Last year the branch also accepted seven drug-smuggling cases for arrest review and four for criminal charging. The smugglers were mainly foreigners from countries including Tunisia, Nigeria and the Republic of Belarus.

The branch also released information on two smuggling cases involving foreign waste that it handled last year.

On March 8 last year, the anti-smuggling bureau of Shanghai Customs transferred a solid waste-smuggling case to the branch for review and charging.

In the case, a man responsible for imports and exports at a local company, surnamed Li, schemed with another man, surnamed Wan, to smuggle solid waste from foreign retailers in an import order for recycled plastic particles.

Customs officials eventually discovered that nearly 52 tons of mislabeled recycled plastic particles were in fact solid waste, which are banned from import.

Since the two men contacted the foreign retailers to return the waste after arrest, they were given a lenient penalty.

They were both sentenced to one year and three months in jail with a reprieve and a 50,000-yuan (US$7,058) fine, while the company was fined 300,000 yuan.

The other case was a public interest litigation filed by the branch against a Ningbo-based company and a man surnamed Huang who illegally imported more than 163 tons of iron-containing solid waste with forged customs documents.

With no way to return the waste seized by customs, the shipment had to be kept at the port, where it posed a threat to the local environment.

Besides criminal punishment, issued on September 6, Huang and his company were ordered to pay more than 1.1 million yuan for the disposal of the waste.