The Shenzhen People's Procuratorate announced that they will soon begin legal proceedings in what will be one of the largest smuggling cases in the city's history.

The Guangzhou-based Guangzhou Daily reported Tuesday that the Huiwei Industrial and Trade Co-operation company in Shenzhen was found to have smuggled a total of 760,000 tons of refined oil from June 1996 to June 1998, thus evading payment of 2.7 billion yuan (US$325 million) in taxes.

So far, six suspects involved in the smuggling have been arrested, according to the report.

The six suspects, formally employed by Huiwei and another company in Huizhou, Guangdong, were charged with smuggling oil through the Huizhou Port in collaboration with local customs officials.

The case was first disclosed in August 2000, when procuratorate authorities were investigating the corruption case of Zhao Yucun, former head of the Shenzhen Customs.

A former director of the Investigation Bureau of Shanghai Customs, Ji Yongzhen, was sentenced Tuesday by Shanghai No 1 Intermediate People's Court to life imprisonment for taking bribes while in Shanghai.

The court decided to confiscate Ji's personal property, valued at 200,000 yuan (US$24,000), as well as 3 million yuan (US$360,000) in property which Ji could not reasonably account for.

In the case of Zhao Yucun in Shenzhen, Zhao, along with his wife and daughter, has allegedly taken more than 9.17 million yuan (US$1.1 million) worth of goods and cash in bribes since 1995. He was expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and sacked from his job in August, 2000.

It is reported that Zhao, then head of the Shenzhen Kowloon Customs, helped Yang Gaiqing, general manager of Huiwei, set up a public tax-free warehouse in Huizhou Port in 1996. Yang then used the warehouse to smuggle over 420,000 tons of refined oil.

Yang has been arrested on bribery charges.

State Councilor Wu Yi Tuesday at a national customs conference urged customs officials to improve their efficiency and law-enforcement abilities.

She said that customs officials should make more efforts to adapt to the new situation in China as a result of its accession to the World Trade Organization.

(China Daily January 17, 2002)