(ECNS) -- Xiamen customs in southeast China's Fujian Province will auction off more than 19,000 bottles of smuggled wine via the online shopping platform JD.com on Monday and Tuesday, Legal Daily reported.
From June 17 to 25, 2015, a Xiamen-based trade company filed declarations for the importation of wines totaling 19,349 bottles to customs in the Xiangyu bonded area, under Xiamen customs.
After customs officers discovered the declared value of the wine was only one-third of its actualtransaction value, the matter was reported to the anti-smuggling department, which seized the wine aaccording to the paper.
Investigators discovered the company had smuggled wine from Australia totaling 1.77 million yuan ($263,000) in value since 2015, possibly evading taxes worth about 420,000 yuan by declaring lower prices, it was added.
The suspect, company general manager Chen Liping, had fled to Australia a year ago and was persuaded only recently to return to China and surrender to law enforcement authorities, the paper said. Chen was under compulsory measure pending further investigations.
The wine will go under the hammer on JD.com as a whole, and only those who have been granted wine or food business operation permits are eligible to bid on them.
Xiamen customs said all revenue from the auction of the seized goods would go into state coffers according to law.
