Fake Importers Smuggle $22 Billion Through Algiers Port

The violations of the exchange through the port of Algiers noticed an upward trend, as the customs’ authorities recorded, during the first six months of the current year, more than 30 cases that are related to violation of the law of exchange, through which fake fraudsters and importers from businessmen and fictitious companies managed to transfer more than DZD 22 million by inflating invoices and providing false documents and false permits, and the number of containers that entered Algiers port during the last year exceeded one quarter million containers.

According to figures that were obtained by Echorouk from the General Directorate of Algiers Port Customs on Wednesday, there was a large increase in the irregularities that are related to the smuggling of capital abroad during the first six months of the current year.

The same sources revealed that a number of fake companies, traders and investors smuggled about 219,000,000 DZD.

“We need to make more efforts and revive the plan of action to address the gangs of money smuggling abroad”.

“Violations of exchange resource increases because these people resort to fraudulent methods of smuggling currency through forgery in the permits with financial differences or differences in the weight of products compared with the numbers that are listed in the import licenses, through involving even citizens through the evaluation of false permits, while the estimated customs violations reached more than 100 cases with a total amount of DZD 95 million that were obtained through DZD 30 billion.

In this context, a report that was received by the Financial Investigation Unit at the Finance Ministry, based on investigations by the Anti-Money Laundering Department, revealed that Algeria’s losses from inflating import bills exceeded, in the final outcome of the first semester of the current year,  $7 billion dollars, and the economic dealers are inflating bills to import their goods 6 times than the real value, to smuggle funds abroad and that illegal billing has allowed the economic operators in many sectors to smuggle a large amount of foreign currency abroad, in return for raising the value of import costs more than the real value, not to mention the dealers who give up their goods in ports.