Strengthening cooperation and early detection of transnational smuggling rings

Following the success of the Mekong Dragon Campaign series, implementing the direction of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Finance , the General Department of Customs continues to deploy Mekong Dragon Campaign 6 in 2024 in the direction of: Upgrading and expanding the scale of the Campaign implementation, enhancing information sharing activities, cooperating in post-arrest investigations to promptly detect transnational smuggling and illegal transportation of drugs and wildlife.

Vietnam Customs and members attended the opening ceremony of the Mekong Dragon Campaign VI.

To date, Operation OMD 6 has received the consent of 25 Customs agencies and law enforcement agencies and international organizations (including 20 customs agencies and 5 international organizations).

The General Department of Customs has also presided over and coordinated with C04 and C05 to organize and deploy the Mekong Dragon Campaign 6 across the entire industry. Activities within the framework of the Campaign expected to be deployed by the General Department of Customs include: Organizing seminars, specialized training for the entire industry, participating in and coordinating group meetings, joint investigations, and key team activities to analyze, collect information and investigate, etc.

Operation Mekong Dragon (OMD) is a series of joint action campaigns between Customs agencies and other law enforcement agencies in the Asia- Pacific region to combat illegal trafficking of drugs, wildlife, wild animals and plants and products from wild animals and plants listed in CITES on all routes, co-initiated by Vietnam Customs and China Customs, launched in 2018 with technical support from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Regional Intelligence Liaison Office for Asia and the Pacific (RILO AP - WCO).

To date, the Campaign has completed 5 phases (from 2018 to 2023), achieving remarkable results. The Campaign is evaluated by RILO AP and international law enforcement organizations as one of the most successful Control Campaigns in the Asia- Pacific region in terms of the number of participants and the number of cases updated to the Campaign's general information system.

Through the Campaign's mechanism, a lot of intelligence information has been warned and exchanged between countries to contribute to the successful arrest of many large cases of smuggling and illegal transportation of drugs, wild animals and plants.

Since 2022, the Mekong Dragon Campaign has been officially included in the Vietnam-China Joint Statement during the official visit to China by General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. In 2023, the Campaign continues to be included in the joint statement between the two countries (Point (3), Section 4.3) with the content: "... continue to deepen cooperation in law enforcement against smuggling, promote the coordinated action to enforce the international law "Mekong Dragon" to achieve more results".

Recently, the General Department of Customs coordinated with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to successfully organize the Opening Conference to deploy the Mekong Dragon Campaign Phase 6 in Ho Chi Minh City with the participation of 64 domestic and international delegates (in which international delegates included delegates from customs agencies from 16 countries and 4 international law enforcement organizations, Vietnamese delegates included: delegates from the Drug Crime Investigation Police Department C04 and the Environmental Crime Prevention and Control Police Department C05 under the Ministry of Public Security, delegates from the Anti-Smuggling Investigation Department and a number of units under the General Department of Customs).

The conference marked the official launch of the Campaign in the Asia-Pacific region. The conference contents included announcements on the implementation of activities within the framework of the OMD 6 Campaign, exchange and sharing of experiences between countries in the enforcement of combating illegal trafficking and transportation of wild animals and plants (CITES) and drugs, and training on skills in collecting, managing, exchanging, analyzing information, and investigating to serve the deployment of the Red Team within the scope of the Campaign.

Source: https://congthuong.vn/tang-cuong-hop-tac-phat-hien-som-cac-duong-day-xuyen-quoc-gia-buon-lau-325957.html