KUALA LUMPUR: The recently busted vape smuggling syndicate is believed to have an international network to make false declarations to mislead the country's authorities.
Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Chief Commissioner Tan Sri Azam Baki said the syndicate's tactics made it difficult for the authorities to detect the goods, with the bribes paid making it even harder for them and resulting in the goods not being inspected.
"The goods are stated in the Airway Bill as Lithium Ion Battery and were not declared in the Electronic Pre-Alert Manifest (ePAM) system or K1 form.
"However, MACC's Intelligence Division has identified the flights which brought the vape units from Macau and Hong Kong, but efforts are still ongoing to identify which country the goods were smuggled from,” he said when contacted on Friday (Jan 24).
He said the goods were brought into Malaysia through false declarations from the source country.
Elaborating on the arrest of 14 individuals, including customs officers suspected of colluding in illegal activities, Azam said the MACC intelligence division is actively probing the case and did not deny that other customs officers and company directors are under its radar.
"Investigations are going on to identify the other suspects. For now, no new arrests are being planned,” he said.
In the recent arrest, he said they also seized several documents related to airway bills, purchase orders, invoices, payment vouchers, delivery orders, ePAM, K1 documents and some other related documents.
In addition, he said the MACC also confiscated several case-related movable assets and froze 12 accounts.
On the detention of the customs officers involved, Azam said they were all in the WK19 to WK22 grades.
"One of them played the role of a collector, who received bribes of between RM4,000 and RM6,000 a day before distributing the ill-gotten gains among them,” he said.
Recently, the MACC crippled a vape smuggling syndicate operating at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Cargo Centre after arresting 14 individuals, including six customs officers, suspected of colluding in illegal activities.
The syndicate's operations, exposed through Ops Airways, saw all the male suspects, aged 20 to 60s, detained during raids conducted around KLIA and Putrajaya, resulting in an estimated RM8mil tax loss to the country's coffers. - Bernama
