Luxury car smuggling foiled

JAKARTA: The Customs and Excise office had foiled the smuggling of four Mercedes Benz vehicles into the country, an officer said on Friday.

Director General of Customs and Excise Permana Agung said the luxury cars, shipped by the MV Kota Maju from Singapore, arrived in Tanjung Priok on Sunday.

The importer, identified as PT RMC, had allegedly forged the import documents by claiming it was importing 29,200 kgs of raw materials for industrial use.

However, the customs and excise officers became suspicious about the address provided by PT RMC in Jakarta, which they considered unconvincing. They checked the containers using X-ray machines, and discovered four Mercedez Benz vehicles, three of them S-320 models and the other an E-320 model.

Permana said that the cars had cost US$160,000 in Singapore, and were subject to an import tax of about Rp 3.2 billion ($320,000).

The address PT RMC had provided in the document was residential and the owner of the house knew nothing about the cars, Permana said.--Antara