Ministry of Finance clarifies

Referring to your news item Customs office in hot seat over disappearance of 14 containers by Nana Rukmana (Feb. 13 ) and another article Scam revealed, Megawati urged to axe customs chief (Feb. 16) by the same writer, concerning the smuggling of 19 containers at Cirebon Port, we would like to clarify as follows:

1. Based on article 7 paragraph (1) Customs Law No. 10/1995, the Customs Service Office at Cirebon has already received the ship manifest of MV Sentosa Jaya voy 868S, which arrived at Cirebon Port on January 2002.

2. The manifest showed that it consisted of 17 containers described as various goods, but our antismuggling team found 2 (two) containers that were not notified on the manifest. Overall there were 19 containers.

3. All of the containers are stored as follows:

- 14 (fourteen) containers at importer warehouse with permission from Head of Customs Service Office.

- 3 (three) containers at Cirebon Port.

- 2 (two) containers, which were not notified in the manifest, at Customs Service Office yard in order to give maximum security.

4. From physical examination of the above containers we found that:

- 14 containers contained textile and electronic goods.

- 3 containers contained electronic goods.

- 2 containers contained 4 (four) CBU cars.

5. All of the containers are still complete at their storage locations.

6. Supporters of political parties are not occupying the Cirebon Customs Service Office.

7. The Cirebon Customs Service Office and Customs Regional Office V Bandung are handling the case seriously.

8. Cirebon Customs Service Office has performed well in terms of cooperation and coordination with other law officers at Cirebon.

Given the above facts we may conclude that your two reports are not accurate. Hence we hope that when comes to customs activities, and for the sake of accuracy, you might care to cross-check the information and confirm it with Customs officers at Customs Service Office, Customs Regional office or Customs Head Office.

For the sake of fairness, we would like to invite you to visit the importer warehouse.

NISFU CHASBULLAH

Director of Prevention and Investigation

Director General of Customs and Excise

Jakarta

Note: The two articles are based on information we got from the field. --Editor