Some 70 trillion rials (more than $1.96 billion at market exchange rates) worth of contraband have been confiscated in the first half of the current Iranian year (started March 20), according to the spokesman of Iran’s Headquarters for Combating Smuggling of Commodities and Foreign Currency.
“Our efforts in combating illegal trade at land and sea borders as well as transit routes have turned smuggling into a high-risk activity,” Qasem Khorshidi was also quoted as saying by Mehr News Agency.
On Tuesday, a large depot of smuggled home appliances worth over 100 billion rials ($2.80 million at market exchange rates) was raided and the appliances were confiscated in Rey County, Tehran Province.
August saw the destruction of 400 tons of illegally imported goods worth 150 billion rials ($4.24 million) in Tehran in what is said to be the largest destruction of contraband in Iran in 38 years.
Khorshidi put the total amount of seized contraband for the past fiscal year (March 2015-16) at $1.4 billion.
Earlier, the headquarters announced that the estimated value of goods smuggled in and out of Iran last year stood at $15.5 billion, 27.7% less compared to the previous year, of which $14.4 billion worth of goods were smuggled into and $1 billion were smuggled out of the country.
Apparel, foodstuff, mobile phones, gold ingots and household appliances top the list of incoming contraband accounting for 41% of the illegal goods.
Fuel is the main item smuggled out of Iran due to its cheap price compared to that in neighboring countries like Turkey and Pakistan.
