This is only a part of the illicit things that imaginative smugglers tried to bring to Serbia via postal items, but were prevented from doing so by skilled officials of the Customs Administration.
– When it comes to narcotics, they most often tried to ingest marijuana in the form of seeds or a young plant that they hermetically sealed in small containers, and there were also slow hallucinogenic mushrooms, ecstasy tablets in the form of popular Disney heroes, cocaine hidden in dried fruit or children’s shoeS – they explain for “Novosti” in the Customs Administration. – Customs officers also found live animals, such as a young tarantula, as well as stuffed trophies, heads and paws of a protected species of American alligator. There are also weapons, cigarettes, antiques, especially metal coins.
Citizens are poorly informed
It often happens that people ship permitted but unusual things via shipments. Thus, the family from Serbia sent a mini-cauldron for brandy to their relatives in Canada, in which jam and some other home-made specialties can be prepared. The Customs Administration reminds citizens that the regulations allow them to receive only consignments whose content clearly indicates that they are goods for personal needs or household needs. They also point out that they should take into account what is forbidden to send by mail or for which goods they will need a permit.
– Citizens are poorly informed about that, and the most common problem occurs with medicines, because, unlike supplements, they cannot be sent or received through shipments – the Customs Administration emphasizes. – Among other things, money, coins, other securities, precious metals, live animals, valuable pieces of jewelry, except in valuable shipments, dangerous and harmful substances, or objects that may endanger human health and life may not be sent by mail, narcotics and psychotropic substances in any form…
In the fight against the gray economy, customs officers not only control the borders, but also detect violations and various violations of regulations within the customs area. With this, the so-called in-depth controls are handled by teams from the Department for the Suppression of Smuggling.
– One of the “channels” that are abused by people who are engaged in illegal trade are the courier services – the Administration states. – That is why customs officers, in addition to delivery vehicles of courier distributors, also control their warehouses, where they sometimes find goods among the shipments without any accompanying documentation on origin, paid duties, as well as those that infringe intellectual property rights…
One of the last cases, as they say, happened on August 20, during the control of a truck that arrived from Novi Pazar to the central warehouse of a courier service in Belgrade. Then, the customs officers found 7,000 packs of cigarettes without excise stamps in the packages of the same sender, which were delivered together with other shipments by a truck with Sabac license plates. On that occasion, more than 100 new appliances, electrical devices and tools were found, without any accompanying documentation.
Permitted goods that they receive as shipments, and whose value does not exceed 3,000 euros, citizens can customs in the so-called shortened procedure, by applying a single customs rate of 10 percent and calculating VAT of 20 percent on the customs value. For shipments worth more than 3,000 euros, it is mandatory to submit a declaration in writing, ie they are cleared through customs in a regular procedure.
When shopping online, consumers do not pay customs duties for products whose value does not exceed 50 euros, but only VAT. Import duties, ie neither customs nor VAT, are paid on goods that they receive as consignments from natural persons from abroad, and whose value does not exceed 70 euros, BiF reports.
