Articles under section " Dossier: Illicit Trade "

The first time that any authority attempted to put an obstacle in the way of humans moving goods or themselves across territory by imposing restrictions, borders, and Customs controls, illicit trade was born, explained journalist and writer Moisés Naím while presenting his latest book.[1] Many sch...

Since the creation of the World Customs Organization in 1952 and its Enforcement Committee in 1984, WCO Members have been discussing ways to identify, stop and prevent illicit trade. From a very early stage, supported by the Secretariat, they developed data and information catalogues, exchanged info...

In July 2021, while most of the world was focused on COVID-19, a dangerous foreign animal disease was discovered in the Western Hemisphere. African swine fever, a highly contagious and deadly viral disease that affects swine, was discovered in the Dominican Republic and then Haiti. But the disease, ...

According to the National Pork Producers Council, a trade association representing U.S. pork producers and other industry stakeholders, the pork industry supports more than 573,300 U.S. jobs and generates more than $62 billion of gross national product to the U.S. economy. In 2023, U.S. pork exports...

Action plan in place When African swine fever was first detected in the Dominican Republic in July 2021, CBP’s agriculture specialists at John F. Kennedy Airport immediately put an action plan in place to respond to the increasing threat of the virus. The main goal of the plan was to board fligh...

Nigeria signed the CITES Convention on 4 May 1974, and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has been in charge of enforcing its provisions ever since. NCS did not serve this function well for many years, but this has now changed. A toothless dog Before 2021, Nigeria featured prominently in reports on...

NCS also fully supported the June 2014 Declaration of the Customs Co-operation Council on the Illegal Wildlife Trade which clearly acknowledged the existence of this problem and urged Customs authorities to use the full range of detection and investigative techniques, including risk profiling, intel...

When I was recruited into Customs, I was trained like every other Customs officer in various techniques to fight crime, but the focus was on collecting and accounting for revenue on trade goods. However, I was given the opportunity to develop other knowledge and skills. The work done by the WCO to r...

For some years now, Argentine Customs has been treating counterfeiting and piracy as a serious threat to its economy and to the health and security of people. In 2011, the WCO recognized these efforts by awarding Argentine Customs a special prize for demonstrating its outstanding commitment to comba...

Moreover, Customs has the competency to act on its own initiative[1] (ex officio procedure). In such cases, the right holder is notified of the detention of the goods, providing him with the opportunity to submit an AFA. However, Customs can also decide to detain the goods and to prosecute the infri...

Risk analysis The Trademark Fraud Division was established in 2006 as a specialized unit to work on enhancing Customs’ capacity to detect IPR infringing goods and to manage the Alert Entry System. Currently, this unit has 25 officials whose task it is to monitor transactions presenting risks an...

Drug abuse is an escalating concern in Mauritius. According to a survey conducted in 2024 by the non-profit company Afrobarometer, Mauritians consider drug abuse and addiction as the second most pressing issue for government intervention, with only the cost of living surpassing it in importance. In ...

The fight against illicit drug trafficking is one of the top priorities of the Mauritius Government. To support these efforts, it engages the Customs Service, alongside the forces of the Police, the National Coast Guard (NCG) and the Anti-Drug Smuggling Unit (ADSU). The National Drug Observatory has...

Tools, equipment and technology Mauritius Customs draws on a panoply of detection and surveillance tools and equipment, systems and state-of-the-art technology in the fight against illicit drug trafficking. Non-intrusive inspection (NII) tools and “drug loo” Although no drug shipments have s...

The COLIBRI Project, which is aimed at monitoring and controlling general aviation (GA) and combating illicit trafficking perpetrated through GA in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) as well as in West and Central Africa (WCA), has been implemented since 2019 by the WCO Secretariat, with the fina...

This means that GA represents a genuine opportunity for organized crime, offering a number of advantages to traffickers. This is a discreet, fast mode of transport that can use smaller aerodromes, where law enforcement agencies are often absent. In order to build surveillance and control capacities ...

Change comes in many forms but it is invariably brought about by two main factors. The first occurs when there is a desire for it, whether by a group or an individual. The second type is born of necessity, when circumstances dictate that there is no other option. Occasionally both impetuses arrive i...

Gold standard The foundation, as seen by Morrissey and Codd, would be built upon meeting the highest standards of EU and WCO training, while delivering to a precise, ambitious set of business needs. With discussions heightening around the development of their own purpose-built practical training sc...

But it wasn’t just the technical training that made the trip so successful. Surrounded by colleagues of other Customs agencies from around Europe, the participants traded knowledge and experiences, as everyone brought something to the table. The trip also served another significant purpose, as Mor...

The landscape formed by IT Customs systems in Brazil has undergone significant transformation in recent years, redefining how the Customs Administration manages and mitigates risks. Through the innovative use of artificial intelligence, including machine learning and real-time monitoring technology...

Together, these solutions swiftly propelled the modernization of Brazil’s Customs control procedures, marking a pivotal step forward in enhancing efficiency and effectiveness. These tools have all evolved to become essential in shaping the way Brazil handles Customs operations. ANIITA and PATROA h...

Helping well-intentioned users SISAM was designed to detect errors in classification codes, not to assist well-intentioned importers and exporters in classifying goods. For that purpose, a new system called CLASSIF[1] was created. This system analyzes the classification of goods using NCM codes, w...

In 2022, the WCO and its Members identified “Technology and Innovation” as one of the three focus areas of the WCO Strategic Plan 2022-2025. For the past few years, China Customs has been implementing the concept of “Smart Customs, Smart Borders and Smart Connectivity”, which established a r...

Constructing a unified database China Customs has comprehensively collected multi-source data and formed a data lake with over 15,000 data tables and more than 260 billion data entries in a local centralized manner. The data sources mainly come from five areas: over 300 types of internal Customs...

The principle of the model construction is as follows: a database was created from internal and external Customs data, including Customs declaration forms, manifests, enterprise reports, logistics documents, inspection reports, anti-smuggling filing, audit and inspection results, fund flows and ins...

For more than 10 years, counter-terrorism units have been witnessing the establishment of caliphates by jihadist groups in the Sahel. Although the activities of militant Islamist groups were initially focused on Mali, they have gradually shifted towards the west and south of Burkina Faso and spread...

Groups of traffickers organized into networks have taken advantage of the situation to step up their illicit activities (trafficking in arms, drugs and human beings etc.) in the border areas of the region and of Benin. Against this background, in October 2023 the authorities in Benin and France dec...