New laws requiring declaration or disclosure of entry and exit holdings of more than HK $ 120,000 worth of cash-like items came into effect last July. The grace period for the first three months of the law's entry into force is customs. The customs will issue a written warning to the first offender. During the grace period, the Customs found a total of 23 cases of violations, and issued 20 and 3 written warnings to passengers and relevant persons responsible for freight transportation. After the grace period, as of the end of last year, the customs found a total of 32 cases of violations of passengers, all of which were paid in accordance with the law. Paying 2,000 Hong Kong dollars to relieve legal liabilities; there was one case of violations in freight transportation, and one person was arrested by the customs and is under investigation. The total value of the cash-related items in these 56 cases was about HK $ 41 million.
The Secretary for Security, Li Jiachao, responded to questions raised by members of the Legislative Council in writing, stating that since the new law came into effect until the end of last year, the Customs has received a total of 10,186 passenger declarations, involving a total value of about HK $ 113.2 billion in cash. In terms of freight, the Customs received a total of 4,863 declarations, involving a total value of about 621.2 billion Hong Kong dollars in cash. In order to enforce the relevant legislation, in addition to the appropriate deployment of existing manpower, the Customs has also created 44 permanent posts and introduced 4 cash search dogs and additional equipment such as money counters to assist law enforcement.
The “Regular Cross-border Flow of Real Currency and Bearer Transferable Bills”, commonly known as the R32 system, came into effect on July 16, 2018. Passengers arriving in Hong Kong through designated control points, if in possession of cash-like items with an equivalent value of more than HK $ 120,000 , You must use the "Red Channel" to make a written declaration; and departing passengers or passengers who have not arrived at a designated control point must disclose whether they have a large amount of cash-like items at the request of customs officers, and report if there are any. A large number of cash items that are imported and exported in the same batch must be declared to the customs in advance through the online "cash item declaration system".
Offenders can be fined up to HK $ 500,000 and imprisoned for 2 years; first-time offenders can be paid if they have never been convicted of money laundering or terrorist financing or if they are not reasonably suspected to be a criminal gain or terrorist property HK $ 2,000 relieved of legal liability.
Source: ON.CC
