Implementing the direction of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance on strengthening the fight against smuggling, trade fraud, counterfeit goods and intellectual property violations, in the first 6 months of 2025, especially during peak periods, the Customs Department has chaired and coordinated to handle many serious violations.
At Cat Lai port (Ho Chi Minh City), the customs agency discovered 84,000 packs of Marlboro cigarettes cleverly hidden in steel tanks exported to Canada. The enterprise could not present legal documents, the case was valued at more than 3 billion VND and was prosecuted for smuggling under Article 188 of the Penal Code.
At Cai Mep port (Ba Ria - Vung Tau), customs forces discovered 525,000 packs of fake cigarettes of the CHEStersFIELD brand in a transit shipment from Cambodia to the UAE. The appraisal sample confirmed that this was a fake item according to the provisions of the law on intellectual property. The estimated value of the shipment is more than 48.6 billion VND.
Also at this port, another case involving 525,000 packs of cigarettes labelled Manchester - United Kingdom exported to Israel was found to have signs of counterfeiting. After verification, the Ba Ria - Vung Tau Provincial Police have initiated a case of counterfeit goods trading under their authority.
The fourth case was recorded continuing at Cat Lai port, with two export shipments to Australia and Malaysia under the name of A.K Company, discovered hiding 253,140 packs of cigarettes without declaring customs clearance, worth about 12 billion VND in violation. The customs authority has initiated criminal proceedings and transferred the case file to the investigation agency for further handling.
From the above cases, the Customs Department assessed that the situation of cigarette smuggling by sea is showing signs of increasing, with increasingly sophisticated and diverse tricks. Vietnam is becoming a transit link for smuggled cigarettes to the international market, with key areas being large southern ports such as Cat Lai and Cai Mep.
Violations range from export, processing, domestic production to cross-Vietnam transportation, with popular counterfeit brands such as Marlboro, Manchester, CHEStersFIELD, DOUBLE HAPPYNESS, ESSE. Destinations of the shipments are spread across the world: Australia, Canada, UAE, Malaysia, Israel.
The customs authority warned that subjects often take advantage of packaging household goods or shipment documents that do not match, such as declaring the goods as "feed documents" or using transit containers to conceal the violating goods. Some shipments were hidden deep in packages or in steel tanks, welded tightly to deceive the authorities.
