Illegal imports in Singapore at record high

Food, animals, plants see biggest increase
Carolyn Quek, Straits Times 5 Feb 10;

CONTRABAND smuggling cases hit an all-time record of 52,800 last year, with cases involving food, animals, plants and other controlled items seeing the biggest increase at the checkpoints.

In releasing its report card for last year, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said the number of contraband smuggling cases on the whole rose 37 per cent from 2008 as smugglers were 'more deceptive and ingenious' in escaping the law.

The most common type of contraband case detected last year involved illegal cigarettes. There were 19,000 of such cases, although they registered a marginal 0.5 per cent rise from 2008.

Cases involving security-related items like flick knives as well as prohibited and controlled drugs like Subutex jumped by more than 70 per cent.

However, the biggest jump involved food, animals, plants and other controlled items identified by Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA).

Such cases jumped to 5,900 cases last year, up by 228 per cent from 2008.

These smugglers tried sneaking in all sorts of flora and fauna: from ornamental fishes, to fertilisers, to even the endangered Agar wood, used to make essential oils.

The oriental white eye - or mata puteh in Malay - a popular songbird here, was however, a favourite of the smugglers and among the most common in this category, the ICA said.

In one case last August, over 50 mata putehs from Indonesia's Tanjung Pinang were hidden beneath trays of otak otak (fish cakes) by an Indonesian man who tried to make his way through the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal.

The birds were supposed to have been delivered to a bird shop owner in Bedok but their chirping gave smuggler Ho Han Hong away and he was jailed for three weeks.

In another major bird smuggling case, a total of 60 jambuls and magpies were found in a Singapore-registered car during a routine check at the Woodlands Checkpoint last December.

It was the unusually high floor mats of the car and flapping sounds that could be heard coming from under the mats and the seats that alerted the authorities.

Since 2006, there have been restrictions on the import of birds from Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI)-affected countries.

These include Indonesia as well as Thailand, China and Malaysia.

One bird shop owner, Mr Frankie Low, told The Straits Times yesterday that the lure of smuggling birds like the mata puteh is hard to resist, given these restrictions.

The 63-year-old said that while these small green birds cost as little as $10 up to eight years ago, they can fetch as much as $150 now.

He said some in the industry also try to get around the rules by shipping birds from HPAI-affected areas to non-affected ones like Japan or Taiwan before they are sent to Singapore.

A spokesman for the AVA said it gives lectures to ICA staff and also sources for outside training such as that provided by non-governmental organisations to help combat smuggling.

'We do all this training to heighten ICA's awareness of AVA's regulated items, so that its officers can assist us in detecting such items when illegally imported.'