$30 m smuggled under the cover of importing stones from China

Customs of both Algiers and Oran ports seized six containers of 40 feet loaded with used gravel that was declared as paper rolls, to be exploited as a fraudulent way for smuggling and laundering money abroad, as the estimated total of funds that have been exchanged at one of the foreign banks in the two operations reached 160.000 euros, the equivalent of one billion and 700 million ZDZ.

Preliminary investigations reveal that one of the involved in this case exchanged 30 million dollars via a bank account.

Official sources at the Directorate General of Customs, told Echorouk

On Wednesday, that the containers of gravel is a new way for smuggling containers of the same size, 40 feet, in Algiers port where agents of Inspectorate at the sections of Customs doubted the weight of the load, especially after the expiry of the legal period of customs’ permission, set at 21 days, and when the container was subject to the scanner, it showed that the load is large bags of gravel, that were imported from China on the basis that they are paper rolls, and the owner is a known man who opened a commercial file using the name of a young man aged 27, as he was used as a cover to convert millions of hard currency illegally towards other countries, from a bank account registered in the French bank;s agency, where the proforma invoice of the seized containers, according to customs estimated to   75,000 euros, which is the amount of money that was transfered.     

The preliminary investigation indicated that the same person was named in the list of persons who transfered during the same period to large sums of hard currency outward in suspicious ways, as it turned out that the owner of the commercial file took nearly $30 million from a bank account.