Vietnam: Hanoi Police Smash Tobacco Trafficking Ring

Source from:  Sai Gon Giai Phong (vn)  01/08/2013

On January 6, Police in Hanoi announced that they had smashed a tobacco trafficking ring that had been trading in thousands of smuggled cigarette packages from a warehouse at the Hanoi train station.

Police in Hanoi also detained a cigarette smuggler who later confessed that he had smuggled about 30,000 cartons or 300,000 packets of foreign cigarettes into the country.

On the evening of January 5, Phan Van Minh, 48, was caught carrying two packages containing 95 cartons of cigarettes on a motorbike to a warehouse owned by the Hanoi Bus Wagon Application Enterprise at 1 Tran Quy Cap Street in Dong Da District.

Failing to show any documents related to the cigarettes, Minh, who is an employee of the enterprise, was detained for investigation.

Based on his testimony, police later searched the warehouse and detected 1,400 cartons of cigarettes that had been stored there without any documents.

The trademarks on the foreign cigarettes were of brands like Capri, Esse, George, Texas 5, and Raison.

Minh told investigators that from mid-November 2012 until his arrest, he had carried out many deals and selling about 30,000 cartons of foreign cigarettes.

Minh said he had already sold about half the smuggled cigarettes.

As a train repairman, Minh often transported smuggled foreign cigarettes by train from south to north, investigators told reporters. Enditem