Customs Tighten Control On Currency, Weapons’ Trafficking

General Directorate of Customs completed the drafting of 50 implementing texts, including 40 texts in their final stages, in preparation for the regulatory texts, for the new Customs Law that will be ready for next June.

The new texts focused on tightening control on smuggling of all kinds, whether in the matter of weapons, hard currency or dangerous products, and illegal money laundering, import and export, and any trade that is affecting public security such as nuclear, radioactive and explosive materials.

In the details, official sources at the Customs General Directorate told Echorouk that the applied texts of the new law that is amending and supplementing the law 79-07 of 1979, and that is amended in 1998, which number reached 50 applied texts, about 40 of which are in their final stages , 4 texts are under implementation, and 4 other texts were forwarded to the Secretariat of the Government, as all of them will enter the texts before the end of the first semester of the current year.

The texts also focused on identifying the categories and entities that are entitled to access the customs declarations, especially the banks and financial institutions, while expanding the scope of the Customs Department’s intervention to all persons who are authorized alongside the customs’ agents.

In addition, control of fraud through the development of a follow-up mechanism in the field of maritime transport through the obligation to identify the addressees, and the inclusion of the summary statement electronically, in addition to the identification of liability between the operator of the temporary warehouse and the carrier, especially in case of theft or loss of goods.

In the area of ​​customs deposit, the application texts specify the cases of deposit of goods by facilitating the process of introducing the automated information system in the field of deposit management, in addition to ensuring the cases of goods that are in the deposit of travelers service, in case of destruction of goods, the specialized services act to establish a legal basis for the destruction of goods by the judge on the form of a judicial order and determine the procedures for the implementation of this order.

The part that is related to the passengers, the applicable text of this category requires the need to authorize payment in foreign currency in exchange for granting the Customs Administration the possibility of selective control of travelers using the databases.

In the context of improving the performance of customs agents, the concept of “collusion” was reintroduced in the applicable text on customs irregularities and the reclassification of certain irregularities by degree of gravity and the roofing of certain fines.