Taiwan and Germany have signed a cooperation agreement on fighting customs fraud, the Directorate General of Customs under the ROC Ministry of Finance announced Sept. 26.
“The Arrangement on Cooperation between the Taiwan Customs Service and the German Customs Service to Combat Customs Fraud” is the third accord of this kind Taiwan has signed with other countries, following an anti-fraud pact with the European Union in May 2011 and a customs cooperation pact with mainland China in August 2012, the agency said.
DGC Concurrent Director General Hwang Ding-fang and Norbert Drude, director of the Customs Investigation Bureau under the German Finance Ministry, signed the arrangement in Taipei City Sept. 25.
The focus of the arrangement is fighting customs fraud, in particular document forgery and false reporting, according to a customs official.
Some mainland Chinese companies fake certificates of origin for their goods and register them as made in Taiwan so as to evade anti-dumping taxes the EU has imposed on mainland Chinese products, the official explained. “The German customs has prioritized battling such fraud,” he added.
The agreement had been under negotiation and drafting for three years before being approved by the Executive Yuan Aug. 30, the DGC said. (THN)