Argentine: AFIP seizes 1.7 tons of undeclared electronic goods

Hundreds of electronic products orginating from the United States were seized by the AFIP tax bureau yesterday as part of an anti-smuggling operation at the Ezeiza international airport, including Apple iPhones, Sony Playstations and more.

The procedure stopped 1,700 kilograms of goods from getting into the country while avoiding Customs and tax payments.

The brand-new devices included notebooks, tablets, smartphones, audio equipment, glasses, cameras, videogames, memory sticks and even some car accesories.

According to a press release, the bureau made the discovery after cross-checking the information provided by the importer with its online databases and, as a result, decided to control the paperwork and contents of a container.

“We looked at the importing company, the taxes it was paying, its bank movements, its sales and registered employees, the income that its directors and partners declared and how much the products were said to be worth, and an alert was created,” AFIP said.

When the container was opened, more than 500 Apple products including 260 iPhone 6 phones, 10 iPads, 60 notebooks and 170 other accesories were found, as well as more than 1,000 other smartphones including Samsung Note 4, Galaxy S5, Gran Neo Plus, Lumia, Asha 210 and 503 models.

The cargo also contained 412 digital photo cameras from the Canon, Nikon and Panasonic brands, 4,600 Kingston computer memory sticks, 44 camera accesories and more.

Overall, the taxman would have been cheated of 7 million pesos if the products went through.

AFIP suspended the CUIT tax paying identification number of the company involved and its commercial partners and seized all the products, and it filed a complaint in the economic criminal courts.

Herald with Télam, DyN