On July 5th, Tianjin Customs released it to the public. After more than half a year, it successfully detected a case of smuggling and importing alcoholic beverages, and verified that about 5 million liters of alcoholic beverages were involved, with a case value of nearly 500 million yuan. The case was listed as a first-class supervision case by the General Administration of Customs, and it is also the largest smuggling and import case of alcoholic drinks in China in recent years.
After investigation, the smuggling suspects Peng Moumou and Kong Moumou used the name of a number of trading companies registered in Beijing and Tianjin to try to escape the blow in the form of a set of brands, and adopted means such as making false and true contract invoices and setting up working capital of offshore companies to smuggle and import various wine products by underreporting prices, and some of the goods involved even understated by 90%.
Nearly 10 million data comparisons found smuggling suspects.
At the end of 2016, the staff of Tianjin Customs found doubts during the follow-up risk analysis of the import of alcoholic products, and the customs clearance data of the two import and export enterprises were a bit "strange".
A company named Tianjin Linsen International Trading Co., Ltd. was established in July 2015, mainly importing foreign wine, red wine, beer and mineral water. From August to December 2015, the company concentrated on importing more than 120 tickets of a large number of alcoholic drinks, with a total value of RMB 100 million and a total weight of more than 1,000 tons. Subsequently, the company had no record of import and export business and disappeared from the customs import database. Strangely, from February to April, 2016, a company named Beijing Linsen International Trading Co., Ltd. appeared out of thin air, and in just three months, it imported 100 million yuan of alcoholic drinks, and then disappeared again.
There is some connection or similarity between the two companies’ import business operation time, types of imported goods and other information, but it is difficult to find problems from the data surface. Is this a coincidence?
The customs anti-smuggling staff noticed that enterprises had no business operations after importing a large number of goods in a short period of time, and similar situations occurred in two enterprises that imported similar goods, which was definitely not simple. In order to further verify the situation, Tianjin Customs set up a special analysis team, and four customs anti-smuggling police officers worked together to investigate. On the one hand, the high-tech analysis software is used to analyze and compare the data of nearly 10 million imported wine commodities in the national customs; On the other hand, check the price level of imported goods of suspected enterprises.
After more than ten days and nights of searching for a needle in a haystack, five companies (hereinafter referred to as "Linsen Company"), including Tianjin Linsen, Beijing Linsen, Tianjin Lester, Tianjin Lexin and Beijing Jiabao, were "fished out" from the massive data. These seemingly unrelated companies have been sorted out and strung together in terms of operation mode, personnel composition, logistics habits, capital flow and import price level. Through investigation, the fact that Linsen Company smuggled imported alcoholic drinks at low prices gradually surfaced.
The registered locations of five companies are scattered in several office buildings in Beijing and Tianjin.
The investigation of the clues of Linsen Company was led by Lao Song of Tianjin Customs Anti-smuggling Bureau. Lao Song is an "old anti-smuggling" with nearly 30 years’ experience in investigation. He told the Economic Information Daily that it is very important to grasp the actual office location of the suspected enterprise in the investigation of smuggling cases, because the key evidence and key personnel of the case often appear in the office, but this time the "opponent" is very cunning.
Lao Song led his colleagues to investigate and found that Linsen Company’s operation mode is extremely hidden, and the registered locations of five companies are scattered in several office buildings in Beijing and Tianjin. When the investigators conducted a visit, they found that these registered locations were the distribution centers commonly known as "leather bag companies", and the office locations and personnel had already changed several times. Neither the lessor nor the property could remember whether there was such a company.
Linsen Company’s sales and collection mostly adopt online mode, and a large number of personal accounts are used for capital transactions, but nothing is found in bank account inquiry. When Linsen Company transports alcoholic products to customers, it often chooses the self-operated "black" logistics, and the inquiries about logistics are also in vain. The sales network is extremely hidden. Unless no one knows the contact information or related information of Linsen sales staff, the company’s staff all use pseudonyms to communicate, and the mobile phones used for work contact are also handled under the guise of other people’s ID cards.
The investigators have visited Beijing for many times, but they have not found the actual business location of Linsen Company. On the one hand, it is suspected of smuggling discovered through data analysis; On the other hand, it is impossible to confirm the actual business location and staff of the company, and the conventional means of handling cases have encountered a bottleneck that is difficult to break through.
Lao Song and the case-handling backbone changed their thinking, sketched out a smuggling flow chart based on Linsen Company, radiating foreign agents, domestic customs brokers, freight forwarding companies and liquor sales, and comprehensively summarized and analyzed data such as customs business information, Internet information and e-commerce information, and determined that the marketing link was the key link with the most accessible information sources. They finally decided to start with the sales of imported drinks in Beijing and find the trace of Linsen Company.
"Hello, my side is a bar, and we want to find a reliable imported wine supplier in Beijing. I heard that Linsen’s business is big enough, can you help me contact? " The case-handling personnel contacted Beijing’s imported wine market in many ways through telephone calls, internet and other means, and inquired about Linsen Company. They also went to Beijing several times, relying on rich experience in handling cases, disguised as bar owners, liquor sales and other identities to conduct on-the-spot investigations.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. The anti-smuggling police finally learned from a sales channel that the actual office of Linsen Company is in Daxing District, Beijing.
Underreported prices range from 60% to 90%.
In the last few days of 2016, severe smog invaded North China for several days. In order to prevent Linsen Company from changing its office location again, Tianjin Customs quickly decided to deploy elite police to set up a "12.28" task force to take action against Linsen Company’s office location. In the fog, the customs investigators made a decisive attack and appeared in front of an office building in Daxing District, Beijing according to the scheduled action time.
As soon as they entered the office of Linsen Company, the investigators found that it was different from the general trading company: the office area was so large that there was no obvious company logo. When the investigators asked whether the location was Linsen Company, a wang xing staff member replied affirmatively that it was not Linsen and had never heard of this company, but the investigators’ keen eyes stayed on a stack of business cards on his desk, which impressively read the position of "Financial Manager of Linsen Company". At this moment, a person took a laptop and a USB flash drive, pushed aside the case handlers and went out. After being stopped, he began to lie that he was a customer who came to work, and finally admitted that he was Liu, the sales manager of Linsen Company.
After confirming that this is Linsen Company, the case handlers quickly searched for relevant evidence. After on-the-spot investigation, the investigators learned that Linsen Company had just moved to this place, and the account books and sales records had not been sorted out. In the data room of more than 20 square meters, tens of thousands of business documents were mixed with various irrelevant materials and piled up in disorder. After eight hours of continuous work, the case handlers checked the information page by page and finally dug up hundreds of real contracts and invoices signed between Linsen Company and foreign investors, which fully proved the fact that the company smuggled imported drinks at an understatement.
Just as the investigators entered the office of Linsen Company, another group of people led by the Customs Anti-smuggling Police Division also went to the warehouse of Linsen Company with great pains. On the day of the operation, due to the influence of heavy fog, the entire highway into Beijing was closed. Dasi and his colleagues set out in the early morning and trudged along the Beijing-Tianjin highway with visibility less than 20 meters. After more than six hours, they finally arrived at the scheduled position on time before the action and successfully seized all the goods involved. After clearing, they seized two warehouses involved and seized more than 680,000 bottles (boxes) of alcoholic drinks. Just as our company was checking the seized goods, several suspicious container trucks appeared in succession near the warehouse. In the follow-up inquiry to the warehouse staff, it was learned that the boss of Linsen Company had originally arranged the emergency delivery on the same day, but the delivery vehicle failed to arrive at the warehouse on time due to the fog.
The key documentary evidence and smuggled goods have been mastered, and the case-handling personnel quickly sorted out the existing materials day and night, and the people involved were questioned according to law, and the fog of the case was cleared up layer by layer. The customs task force is divided into seven working groups, including the investigation team, the Beijing working group, the documentary team, the pursuit team, the comprehensive team, the legal team and the inspector team. The average daily working hours are more than 16 hours, and tens of thousands of pages of paper materials involved in the case are combed and reviewed, more than 3,000 pieces of information such as online banking and bank cards are checked, and thousands of electronic data books and more than 10,000 emails are screened. These evidences restore the criminal facts that Linsen Company and its related companies have violated the law and undermined national economic security in less than two years since their establishment in March 2015.
Liu, the sales manager of Linsen Company, as the initial builder of Linsen, has a large number of illegal smuggling facts, but this person has nearly 10 years of police experience, is familiar with handling procedures and has certain anti-investigation experience. At first, Liu was in a bad state and even threatened the staff of Linsen Company not to cooperate. However, he didn’t expect that the investigators sorted out the evidence of smuggling crimes in Linsen Company in the past two years so quickly. In the face of hard evidence, Liu finally gave up resistance and confessed the illegal and criminal facts of Linsen Company and itself, which opened a breakthrough for the case.
After arduous work, the task force found out that from March 2015 to December 2016, in the past 20 months, the smuggling criminal gang headed by the criminal suspects Peng and Kong had been in the form of a set of multiple brands. In the name of five companies, including Tianjin Linsen, Beijing Linsen, Tianjin Site, Tianjin Lexin and Beijing Jiabao, the price was understated (the underreporting range was generally 60% to.
"Linsen Company’s underreporting of common drinks is not large, and for some drinks that are relatively rare and difficult to refer to, it greatly increases the underreporting of prices. Some red wines are clearly $20 a bottle and directly reported as $2. " At the warehouse site, the Department of Anti-smuggling Police picked up an 18-year-old mixed whisky Chivas and showed it to the Economic Information Daily reporter. The original price of this bottle of wine was about RMB in 300 yuan, while the price quoted by Linsen Company was only 100 yuan, with an amazing gap. "These drinks are mainly supplied to bars and nightclubs in Beijing. Because the company smuggled wildly and then monopolized the market at a low price, many companies with regular operations were unsustainable. "
Making false documents, hidden payment methods
In recent years, with the improvement of domestic living standards, the demand for imported drinks has increased year by year. However, due to the high tax rate and the large price difference between domestic and foreign markets, smugglers are tempted to take risks at the risk of profiteering.
In the interview, the reporter of Economic Information Daily learned that the case mainly has three remarkable characteristics in terms of criminal methods: First, "one set of people, many brands", and the suspects cross-declare imported drinks in the names of different companies that seem completely irrelevant to confuse and evade supervision; The second is to make false price documents for customs declaration, and each link has a clear division of labor, and the operation is "standardized" and "professional"; Third, the payment methods are more diversified and secret.
In order not to attract the attention of the anti-smuggling department and make the smuggling more concealed, the criminal suspect has registered and established five companies in Beijing and Tianjin, including Beijing Linsen, Beijing Jiabao, Tianjin Linsen, Tianjin Lester and Tianjin Lexin, to smuggle imported drinks. The five companies are not obviously related, with different registered addresses and different legal representatives. Criminal suspects cross-declare imported drinks to the customs in the name of the above five companies, which on the one hand spreads risks and on the other hand confuses people’s sight.
Making false trade documents for customs declaration is a common practice in smuggling cases of underreporting prices, and there are also two sets of true and false trade documents in this case. At the same time, in the process of making false trade documents to import smuggled goods, the division of labor is clear: there is a special person responsible for contacting foreign suppliers to order goods, receiving and filing relevant real contracts, invoices and other trade documents; A person specially assigned to make false documents such as contracts and invoices lower than the real transaction price according to real trade documents and fixed templates for falsely reporting imports; There is also a special person responsible for contacting the freight forwarding company and passing false documents for customs declaration. A clear division of labor makes the whole criminal process more "professional" and "standardized".
Another notable feature of this case is the diversification and secrecy of payment methods. In order to successfully pay the balance payment beyond the declared amount overseas, the criminal suspect has successively registered and established two offshore companies, and remitted the balance payment to the above-mentioned offshore company account in the name of personal use and the amount of foreign exchange payment through the accounts of himself, his employees and other individuals, and then operated the offshore company account to remit the balance payment to the designated account of foreign businessmen. Due to the limited amount of personal foreign exchange payment, when the amount of offshore account is insufficient, the criminal suspect will transfer part of the payment to offshore account or other accounts designated by foreign investors through the channels of underground banks.
(The company name and name in the article are all pseudonyms, reporter Lu Min and Ban Juanjuan)
