Males and female founded guilty and imprisoned for handling and having duty-not-paid cigarettes (with pictures)
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A regional male and an inbound female guest were sentenced to 12 months’ jail time and 14 weeks’ jail time respectively at the Fanling Magistrates’ Courts today (August 29) for handling duty-not-paid cigarettes, and having duty-not-paid cigarettes and stopping working to state them to Customs officers, in breach of the Dutiable Commodities Ordinance (DCO).
Customs officers obstructed a 37-year-old regional male who was pulling a batch of freight with a pallet truck for evaluation at the Chung Ying Street Checkpoint in Sha Tau Kok on February 24. An overall of 329 400 duty-not-paid cigarettes, with a market price of about $1.3 million and a task capacity of about $1.1 million, were taken from 33 container boxes of the consignment. He was consequently detained. The guy was sentenced to 12 months’ jail time for handling duty-not-paid cigarettes today.
In addition, Customs officers obstructed a 52-year-old inbound female guest at the Heung Yuen Wai Control Point on August 12 and took 1 981 duty-not-paid cigarettes, with a market price of about $8,900 and a task capacity of about $6,500, from the thermal bags in her ownership. The guest was consequently jailed. She was sentenced to 14 weeks’ jail time for having duty-not-paid cigarettes today.
Custom-mades invites the sentence, keeping in mind that even a novice wrongdoer might still be put behind bars. The custodial sentence has actually enforced a substantial deterrent impact and shows the severity of the offenses. Custom-mades advises members of the general public that under the DCO, tobacco items are dutiable items to which the DCO uses. Anyone who handles, has, offers or purchases illegal cigarettes dedicates an offense. The optimum charge upon conviction is a fine of $1 million and jail time for 2 years.
Members of the general public might report any believed illegal cigarette activities to Customs’ 24-hour hotline 182 8080 or its devoted crime-reporting e-mail account (crimereport@customs.gov.hk) or online kind (eform.cefs.gov.hk/ form/ced002).