Particularly serious case

After more than half a year fighting the case, the Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department under the General Department of Customs realized that this is a particularly serious case, involving many businesses and organizations, including domestic and foreign individuals such as the US, Cambodia, Singapore and Hong Kong (China).

Therefore, from April 2020, the General Department of Customs has approved the Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department to work with the Department for Investigation of Economic Crime and Corruption (C03), on understanding the relationship between domestic organizations and foreign ones. As a result, the authorities identified dozens of suspects, led by Trinh Tien Dung, Mac Thanh Nam and Mac Van Nguyen.

Trinh Tien Dung, born in 1973, has been living in the US since July 22, 2019. He was used to illegally transport money from Vietnam to abroad and vice-versa on a large scale.

Dung hired people as legal representatives to establish companies in the US and Cambodia to illegally transport money across the border. In Vietnam, Dung directed the establishment of dozens of companies, including buying identity cards from pawn shops, hiring people to make fake identity cards and fake contracts, in order to bring money from Vietnam to abroad and vice-versa.

Through investigation, it was found that domestic intermediary companies provided electronic components to the Thuduc Housing Development Corporation and Saigon Southwest Trading Joint Stock Company to carry out export procedures and sell them to foreign companies which were established and operated under the direction of Trinh Tien Dung.

Electronic components are imported into Vietnam with the declared price at about 0.05 US$/unit, then resold to intermediary companies, then the intermediary companies sell the goods to exporting companies with a price 150 to 400 times higher than the import price.

Breaking the case

The Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department and C03 chose the shipments from the Indo Vina Investment Trading Service Co., Ltd. to start the case.

On October 1, 2020, the Indo Vina Investment Trading Service Co., Ltd registered a declaration at the Saigon port area 1 Customs Branch to import 250 Canon black and white laser printers. After physical inspection, the authorities found that the import goods were not similar to the declared contents and worth billions of dong.

On October 27, 2020, the Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department sent Official Letter N1247, to C03 to transfer the case of the Indo Vina Investment Trading Service Co., Ltd, to take the case to the court.

On December 31, 2020, the C03 issued a decision to prosecute a digital criminal case for the crimes of "Smuggling"; “Illegal border transportation of goods and currency” and “Use of fake seals or documents”, for The Hai Electronic Service Trading Co., Ltd., Indo Vina Investment Trading Service Co., Ltd and some related units. At the same time, the C03 prosecuted and detained many suspects. Through searching the working and living places of the suspects, the C03 collected many papers and documents related to crimes, including more than 200 seals of more than 100 companies and many fake ID cards.

On May 27, 2021, the C03 issued a decision to prosecute a criminal case for " Fraudulent appropriation of property " and "abuse of position and power for property appropriation” and issued a decision to two accused people as leaders of the Saigon Southwest Trading Joint Stock Company.

On November 25, 2021, the C03 arrested some leaders of the Thuduc Housing Corporation and the director of An Lanh Phat Co., Ltd.

The role of the Anti-Smuggling Investigation Department

The Department directed Teams 3 and 7 to deploy measures to coordinate with the C03.

Specifically, the department transferred documents and material evidence, backed by the declaration dated October 1, 2020, of the Indo Vina Investment Trading Service Co., Ltd at the Saigon Port Zone 1 Customs Branch and The Hai Electronic Service Trading Co., Ltd to the C03 for prosecution.

The department gathered and analyzed data of 132 companies to report to the leaders of the General Department of Customs, and transfer documents for investigation at the request of C03. As a result, 100 companies were identified for engaging in import and export activities related to organizations, individuals or goods in cases under investigation. These companies have exported and imported goods worth more than VND17.8 trillion.

Detecting doubts in software import, through analysis results, the total declared value on the import declaration is about more than VND2.5 trillion, but the actual transferred money may be larger because many companies import CD ROM discs containing software, but only declare the value of the blank CD (very low), so the value of software contained in that CD is not declared, even though the taxable value can be billions of VND. The total value of the software was initially assessed at more than USD61 million. Most of these declarations were registered in 2020.

The Customs agency also discovered suspicions in exported wooden paintings. Of the more than VND15 trillion in export goods of the 100 companies mentioned above, VND284billion is attributed to exported wooden paintings. Including, 28 declarations of 14 businesses with 5,366 wooden paintings and handicrafts which were declared at more than VND284 billion. Of the thousands of these paintings, most are declared to be valued from VND30 million to nearly VND80 million, this is abnormal.

On December 30, 2020, Team 3 conducted a search of the imported shipment of the Ha Giang Import-Export Trading Service Co., Ltd and identified used electronic goods. The Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department directed Team 3 to conduct a further investigation to prosecute the case or transfer the case to C03.

Also on December 30, 2020, Team 3 worked with the Saigon port zone 1 Customs Branch, Intel Vietnam Co., Ltd., to sample an Intel Xeon W-2197 chip shipment in the list of goods declared under customs declaration 103568434800 /A11, of the Indo Vina Investment Trading Service Co., Ltd.

On January 22, 2021, Intel Corporation's representative Sao Bac Dau of the Industrial Property Co., Ltd. said, "Intel confirms that the Intel Xeon W-2197 chip products in the above shipment are not manufactured or authorized by Intel. Accordingly, these Intel Xeon W-2197 chip products are fake.” The case has been transferred to C03 for further investigation.

On December 25, 2020, Team 3 sent officers to work with C03 to search five domestic warehouses of the suspects, discovering thousands of wooden art paintings.

The leader of the Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department assessed that this is a particularly serious and case of "Smuggling", "Illegal cross-border transportation of cash", "Use of fake seals and documents", " fraudulent appropriation of property", and "abuse of position and power to appropriate property".

Suspects have organized the illegal transportation of goods abroad in large quantities, organized the smuggling of high-value goods whilst declaring undervalue of goods to evade taxes and appropriate tax refunds. In which, the Thuduc Housing corporation was refunded more than VND365 billion in VAT and the Saigon Souhthwest Trading Joint Stock Company was refunded more than VND153 billion in VAT

The offenders operate not only in Vietnam but also in the US, Singapore, Hong Kong (China), Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Canada. In addition to dozens of related suspects, the authorities determined a list of 100 companies involved.

Arduous battle of wits

From the start, the Customs authorities have foreseen the criminal violations of suspects, but take a lot of time and effort because the suspects are very knowledgeable about the law and have been advised by experienced experts in the field of banking, import and export, customs, tax, investment plans. This is really an arduous battle of wits between the Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department officers and the authorities and criminals.

On the other hand, the number of businesses involved in the case is huge, so the collection of documents for investigation in such a short time is also a big challenge in the process of solving cases.

During the operation, the leader, Trinh Tien Dung, resides in the US and directs from afar to suspects in Vietnam. Buyers live abroad and order goods via the internet, trade them in Vietnam and then deliver them to a third country, so it is difficult for investigation. Most enterprises established in the country are do not exist. They used fake documents to register their operations, so it is very difficult to trace, verify and clarify cases.

The suspects used many individuals and organizations in their activities, registered many bank accounts to transfer money and used many intermediaries to avoid the control and verification of the authorities.

Another difficulty is that Team 3 has only three to four offices that are in charge of special cases and others are often rotated.

The offenders used many sophisticated methods, such as using goods that are difficult to assess export value and which are almost impossible to assess technically, such as electronic components including chips, RAM, boards, and SD memory cards.

For these items, Team 3 has taken samples for assessment, but Vietnam does not have any organization or agency capable of inspecting them. As for exported goods, they are traded via many domestic transactions, this pushes the price high. When exporting, the unit price of goods is already dozens or even hundreds of times higher than the import price.