Shanghai Customs officials check imported ice wines. Four people have been arrested for deliberately underpricing the imported wines and evading customs tariffs.(Zhang Jie)
Four suspects have been arrested for smuggling ice wines worth 300 million yuan ($45.45 million), Shanghai Customs said yesterday.
They are accused of faking customs declaration documents that undervalued the cost of the imported wines, thereby evading customs duty, officials said.
A person surnamed Zhang would pay tour guides from China to take tourists to his vineyard in Canada. After the visitors placed orders for the ice wines, which are expensive than the regular wines, Zhang would arrange to have them delivered in China.
The deal suited the tourists as the bottles are heavy and there were restrictions on the amount of spirits that could be brought into the country by travelers.
Zhang reportedly would order his staff at the vineyard to fabricate customs declaration documents, undervaluing the prices of the wines whose market costs were three to four times higher, Shanghai Customs claimed.
Ice wine costs approximately between 300-500 yuan abroad but receipts presented to the customs would be of even less than 100 yuan.
Officials said Zhang has confessed to the fraud. The three other suspects who have been arrested all work for Zhang.
In March, Shanghai Customs cracked down on smuggling of imported ice wines and rounded up 18 suspects in Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi'an, Shenzhen and Xiamen.
Three other companies were accused of cheating on imported ice wines to evade import duties and selling them for huge profits on the Internet and at wine stores.
Officials said while the amount of imported ice wines kept growing over the years, the prices declared at the customs kept falling, which led to suspicion. In some cases, the prices quoted to the customs were about 10 yuan per bottle while it was actually being sold for 10 times that price in the domestic market.
Ice wine is a kind of grape wine and is mainly produced in Canada, Chile and Germany.
