TEHRAN - Over the past week, smuggled goods and currency worth 2,733 billion rials (nearly $65 million at the official rate of 42,000 rials) have been discovered in the country, police official Mohammadreza Moqimi announced on Saturday.

A total of 12.431 million items of smuggled goods along with 1.256 million liters of smuggled fuel and 783 smuggled cars were seized during the mentioned period, he added, IRNA reported.

In this regard, 1,310 culprits have been arrested and handed over to the judicial authorities, he noted.

Every year, $20-25 billion are smuggled in and out of the country, which, if stopped, will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Hassan Norouzi, a member of the parliament, said.

In the Iranian calendar year 1396 (March 2017-March 2018), $12 billion was smuggled into Iran and $900 million out of the country, according to the Headquarters for Combating the Smuggling of Commodities and Foreign Exchange.

Iran, which has a 900-kilometer border with Afghanistan, has been used as the main conduit for smuggling Afghan drugs to narcotics kingpins in Europe.

Despite high economic and human costs, Iran has been actively fighting drug trafficking over the past decades.

In June 2020, the first phase of the national anti-smuggling plan was implemented with the priority given to customs, tobacco, and transit goods.

MG