The President of Liberal Democrats Party Mrs. Tracy Dani Chamoun, visited this morning, on Thursday, the Regie’s headquarter in Hadath. Mrs. Chamoun was welcomed by the President and General Manager of the Regie Nassif Seklaoui, Eng., the member of the Administration Committee Georges Hobeika, as well as the Head of Public Relations Department Mrs. Nahla Slim.
For the occasion photographs were taken beside the plate of the late Kamil Chamoun at the building’s entrance.
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During the conference Mr. Seklaoui announced that “the smuggling phenomenon accelerated since 2013 and reached by 2014 about 40%, which deprived the State from around 200 millions USD in revenues.” He added: “starting 2013 the RLTT started a series of unprecedented procedures; it repeatedly addressed notices to the companies that handle illegal products, and during 2014, hundreds of packs were seized and some manufacturing companies were fined by the value of the smuggled tobacco products; whereas some fines reached millions of dollars. The policy that was adopted was to hold the companies responsible on the financial level and they were forced to pay the price of seized products.”
He continued: “later, the importing policy was modified in order to become stricter; wherein companies were bind to pay the price of seized products, including customs duties, VAT, and profits.”
He declared that: “a new paragraph was added to the import licensing regulation; indicating that in case smuggled tobacco products were seized, the manufacturing company will be held responsible and will be bind to pay to the RLTT the correspondent of seized products, including all duties”. In addition an annual limit was set for the companies’ sales, whose products were seized in order to bind them to pay cost and profits that the nation treasury had lost.
Seklaoui pointed that the RLTT informed the Heads of sales that it would “cancel the license in case of the possession of any single smuggled packet”.
While praising the efforts paid by the anti-smuggling department during 2015, he said that the general anti-smuggling campaign that the RLTT launched included “inspecting 1500 stores and carrying several raids in almost every region; such as West and East Bekaa, Akkar, Hermel, Tripoli, Jabal Mohsen, Northern suburb, Saida, Tyre, as well as several Palestinian Camps as Al Bus, Borj Al Barajneh, Sabra, and Bidaoui. Likewise, more than 30 apartments were inspected, after receiving the approval of the Public Prosecution; from where smuggled goods were seized.” He indicated that the quantity of smuggled tobacco products exceeded 3000 packs.
Thus the campaign resulted in “800 reports, whereas fines reached 1 billion 450 million LBP. He added: “40 vehicles were seized or detained, awaiting the payment of fines, 16 head of sale’s licenses were canceled, following seizing of smuggled products in their stores.” He pointed to “seizing manufacturing unit that counterfeited cigars and mu’assal, as well as prints from a printing press that counterfeited cigars’ labels. In addition, the RLTT informed the Public Prosecution about smuggling several tobacco brands that were not even authorized in Lebanon, while indicating the implicated by names and address.”
About fighting smuggling through commercial ways, Seklaoui said: “within the approval of Ministry of Finance, the RLTT founded a developed factory, whose administrative arrangement were accomplished during 2014, while in 2015 equipment was manufactured and installed, and later production took off. RLTT was able to introduce new brands of cigarettes, which were successfully marketed, and thus smuggling decreased to reach 25%. Recently, we are working on accomplishing the arrangement of a second production line, since the capacity output does not cover the market’s demand, although functioning to maximal levels”.
During the press conference huge quantities of seized counterfeit cigars were displayed. In fact Seklaoui clarified that cigar smuggling is done by three means: whether by entering the packs in ready-made cooled containers, importing bulk counterfeit cigar and then proceeding with the packaging in Lebanon after applying the ring, or purchasing legal cigar from different resources, then adding rings in order to be sold as Cuban cigar.”