"Attempted Reoffense While Wanted"... Korea Customs Service Arrests Overseas Smuggling Ring

A group attempting to smuggle a large quantity of cigarettes hidden inside plywood for export was caught by customs authorities. Notably, the ringleader who led the smuggling was found to have attempted the crime again despite already being wanted for cigarette smuggling.

On the 11th, the Busan Customs Office of the Korea Customs Service announced that it recently arrested five individuals on charges of violating customs laws for attempting to smuggle about 800,000 packs of cigarettes (worth approximately 3.2 billion KRW) to Australia and sent them to the prosecution.

Mr. A and others from a smuggling organization attempted to smuggle a large quantity of cigarettes hidden inside export plywood to Australia but were caught by customs authorities. Provided by the Korea Customs Service

Among those arrested, Mr. A (52, the mastermind) and two others were detained. It was investigated that they conspired to smuggle cigarettes to Australia for price arbitrage and illicit profits.

In fact, the price of a pack of Marlboro cigarettes in Australia is known to be 25.53 AUD, nearly eight times higher than in South Korea (3.33 USD). This was the reason Mr. A and others attempted to smuggle cigarettes to Australia.

Busan Customs analyzed risk information received from the Australian Customs and detected and seized about 400,000 packs of cigarettes that Mr. A and others tried to smuggle out.

Additionally, they provided cargo information of the cigarettes already shipped and en route to Australia to the Australian Customs, which led to the seizure of another 400,000 packs locally.

During this process, Busan Customs confirmed that Mr. A was also the mastermind behind a cigarette smuggling case worth 56.6 billion KRW involving 1.39 million cartons seized at Daegu Customs in 2020. He led the same crime even while on the wanted list.

According to the investigation, Mr. A and others concealed cigarettes by attaching two plywood sheets together to create the thickness of one pack of cigarettes, making a space to hide 320 packs of cigarettes, and then attaching thin plywood on the top and bottom surfaces to make it look like a single sheet of plywood during the customs plywood inspection process.

Busan Customs explained that this was a new method devised with the previous smuggling method in mind, where cigarettes were hidden in empty spaces between dozens of plywood sheets, which was detected by customs in 2020.

A Busan Customs official said, “Smuggling damages the trust in goods exported by domestic companies and leads to increased inspections at customs in the importing countries, raising trade barriers. Customs will focus on blocking smuggling by strengthening crackdowns based on international cooperation with export partner countries.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.