SANA’A – Abdulrazaq Al-Mirani, deputy assistant of Customs Affairs and Smuggling Combat at the Customs Authority, denied any truth to a study recently published by the Media Economic Center for Studies indicating that 90 percent of customs and tax revenues are lost at ports due to fraudulent processes carried out by merchants and customs employees.

Al-Mirani said the news is unfounded because the Customs Authority currently hinges on modern calculation systems, and customs revenues reached 60 percent this year.

“However, a report released by the MECS indicated that 90 percent of customs revenues are not authentic. This is untrue and contradictive to the increase of the customs revenues.”

Al-Mirani said the Customs Authority is preparing a suitable reply and will summon the center to court for publishing the news.

“The authority will hold a press conference revealing to the public the yearly increase of revenue.”

For his part, Mustaf Nasr, head of the center, said he had documents to prove the incrimination of many merchants and others responsible for customs; the documents prove the forging of purchase and selling documents of imported products and goods, Nasr said.

“This is the first issue we published against the Customs Authority,” Nasr said. “We have a string of documents in terms of corruption at the authority. The documents will be published later.”

The documents prove the majority of merchants and others responsible for customs resort to pricing goods and products no higher than ten percent different from their true price for the purpose of manipulating customs and tax fees, according to Nasr.  

He said the documents show the Customs Authority accepts inauthentic documents presented by some importers who hide the genuine prices of goods, in addition to the neglect of examining procedures by specialists at the Inspection Department.  

Nasr said the Customs Authority itself accepts the entrance of goods with false prices, contradicting what is publicly revealed each year.