Digitizing Tickets Sales to Curb Hard Currency Smuggling by Foreign Airlines

Customs services are currently preparing all requirements for monitoring the sale of tickets related to foreign airlines and handing them over to a Korean company, to introduce them to an accurate electronic digital system, which includes all details of the sale of electronic tickets in a way that ensures “transparency” and puts an end to manipulations, violations and smuggling of cash abroad, with the new digital system to be implemented before the end of 2024.

In detail, Echorouk sources revealed that, in implementation of the instructions of the General Manager of Customs, Major General Abdelhafid Bakhouche, which included the need to expedite the implementation of the project on the ground, to preserve the state’s stock of hard currency, the customs services are currently working on preparing all the requirements related to the process of monitoring the sale of tickets by foreign airlines operating in Algeria, with its gradual delivery to the Korean operator, to be introduced into the digital electronic system, which ensures strict control of the transfer of ticket sales in Algerian dinars to these foreign companies.

Algerian customs services are in the process of putting the final touches on digitizing the monitoring of the movement of sea containers and parcels at the level of shipping at airports, which will bring transparency to all customs operations and thus combat smuggling, fraud and inflated invoices, through the digitization of the information system known as “SAS” which works to make the borders smart to facilitate the movement of goods.

It will also facilitate and speed up the process and reduce the time many operators complain about, whether in Algerian ports or when settling transactions and files at the administrative services level.

Digitization and electronic ticket sales will eliminate the “systematic” drain on public treasury funds by foreign airlines that have been corrupt since the beginning of their activity in Algeria. Even though the Bank of Algeria’s instruction issued in 2001, bearing the number 08/2001, restricts the ticket sales process, these foreign companies did not respect its content, and for years they smuggled huge sums of cash in hard currency.

Investigations that were previously published in detail by “Echorouk” revealed the way these foreign companies deceived regulations to smuggle cash and transfer it abroad, by selling tickets to Algerians in Algerian dinars instead of hard currency that benefits the state treasury, in addition to using the travel ticket number in the name of one traveler two or three times. However, that person only travelled to the destination in question once, in addition to the forged statements of the total amount of tickets purchased by the travellers, especially since the Algerians buy the travel tickets in dinars. Foreign airlines transfer cash to their banks in hard currency, in addition to tampering with exchange bills.

The investigations in this case also showed that the process of transferring and smuggling money by the airlines involved began in 2001, the year in which the Central Bank of Algeria issued Instruction No. 05-2001 dated September 4 of the same year, which confirms that “the issuance of airline tickets for flights from abroad to Algeria paid in Algerian dinars, can only be done for the benefit of administrations, state institutions and local authorities through request receipts and for the benefit of legal persons subject to Algerian law and regularly registered in the commercial register on specific flights from abroad to Algeria, and this in an exceptional manner for the benefit of their agents and non-resident foreign technicians invited to intervene in Algeria within the framework of the implementation of transactions or contracts previously domiciled under the regulations in force.”