National Customs Scheme To Track Down Hard Currency Flight And Laundered Money

Acting Director General of National Customs Services, Mr. Noureddine Allek, confirmed that 2018 will be the year designed to curb the violations of the exchange currency law, the smuggling of foreign currency and money laundering, as well as the control of prohibited items from imports to end fraud by leaking such prohibitions under the cover of the similar tariff item.

In his first statement to “Echorouk” since taking over the post of senior official in the national customs sector, he launched his pledged to organize a reshuffle at the level of the heads of the regional control and anti-fraud departments who have stayed in their positions for more than five years tasked with curtailing violations of the exchange currency law.

  He underlined to this effect that the customs services will resort to another anti-fraud method related to the leakage by some shady operators of these prohibited materials by means of false declarations of customs tariff items for imported products and the exploitation of customs tariff clauses for similar materials.

“There are those who are active in money laundering and are operating in foreign trade. It has become a satanic game,” he said. 

“In order to counter this circumvention, the Customs Department will impose permanent control on importers and economic traders. Who import large quantities of inputs from their production, where we will focus our interventions on exchange violations because we have noticed that the financial losses in this area have become significant,” he explained.

In this context, the violations of exchange laws during the last 10 months of the year, witnessed an upward trend, as the figures in the possession of “Echorouk” show that the customs services recorded, more than 1,600 cases of violation of the Exchange Act, 820 of them related to the smuggling of hard currency and money laundering, while economic enterprises and importers were able to convert more than 5 Billion centimes (DA) in hard currencies.

A number of fraudulent companies, shady traders and dubious investors have “diverted” about 45 billion dinars and 595 million centimes during the 10 months of the past year, according to our interlocutor.