TEHRAN – Smuggled goods worth 525 billion rials (nearly $1.1 million) have been seized over the past 72 hours in the country, the head of Tehran Economic Security Police, has said.

A plan was implemented to patrol fuel tankers and stations, as well as control the passing vehicles, IRNA quoted Hedayat Abbasi as saying on Wednesday.

During 72 hours, 14 fuel vehicles were confiscated and 37 people were arrested, he stated.

Referring to the discovery of 255,900 liters of fuel as one of the achievements of this plan, he said that since the implementation, 1,802,425 items of contraband without a bill of lading and customs licenses were also discovered.

On July, 2 trillion rials (nearly $4.5 million) were confiscated across the country through the third stage of the plan to combat the smuggling of goods and currency, Jalal Amini, head of the anti-trafficking police, said.

In order to help domestic production, the fight against smuggling is underway continuously through monitoring of goods (origin and destination) and implementing periodic and intermittent inspecting of roads are on the agenda by the anti-trafficking police throughout the country, he explained.

The smuggled goods include basic goods, home appliances, electronic and medical equipment, car, cosmetics, clothes, and currencies, IRIB reported.

----------$20-25 billion of smuggled goods annually

Every year, $20-25 billion worth of goods 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.

According to some reports, over ten million liters of gasoline are smuggled out of Iran on a daily basis, adding up to 3.65 billion liters every year. Other reports put the number higher. On December 19, 2018, a government spokesman said every day, 11.5 million liters of gasoline are smuggled out of Iran. Ali Adyani, a member of the Iranian Parliament's Energy Committee, has quoted various sources as putting the figure at 10, 15, and even 20 million liters a day.

Mohammad Hassan Nejad, another member of the committee, says the smuggled fuel amounts to 22 million liters per day. With a 50 cent per liter profit, the total daily income adds up to 400 trillion rials annually or $3.3 billion, nearly the same as the country's annual development budget.

In addition to gasoline smuggling, other fuels such as kerosene and diesel are also smuggled, not in lesser quantities.

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

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