At the beginning of the year four officials of the Belarus customs (including head of the State customs committee Department) and a local businessman were detained for illegal export of Russian hide and skins from Belarus. Preliminary estimate of the damage, done to the State for half a year of illegal activities is about 3 million American dollars. Investigation concerning head of one of the State Customs Committee departments and head of a custom-house is carried out by the Republican Prosecution office. Criminal case against head of a regional customs post and an officer of State Customs Committee department is now in the Investigation Committee of the Interior Affairs Ministry.
The first criminal case was initiated at the end of January against some individual entrepreneur. According to official documents the businessman brought from Russia wet salted cattle hides and skins having the license, given to Bellegprom in summer 2002, took these hides and skins outside Belarus territory (to Europe) and brought back to Belarus semi-manufactured product (wet-blue), manufactured from these skins for further finishing. According to the investigators, 6000 tons of skins were illegally exported this way for 6 months.
The license had been given to the entrepreneur with violation of the current law. According to the Customs Code foreign goods are not to be exported outside the republic territory. Only home-made goods which were manufactured or released for free circulation on the Belarus territory may be sent abroad. In this case the owner of the goods pays export duty to the customs bodies for taking it to another country. When, after being processed, the goods come back, the duty paid earlier is redeemed to the owner.
Despite the fact that according to the documents submitted to the customs bodies hides and skins had been brought to the republic as semi-processed goods, the prosecution states that hides and skins were sold abroad, and semi-finished goods were exported to the country only on paper (without real delivery being made). The duty paid earlier returned to the entrepreneur only on the basis of the document submitted by him, thought according to the rules customs officials must not only see the goods for themselves, but to get proof that it was made from the earlier exported rawhides.
As a result, according to the investigators, the budget lost 800 thousand US dollars of export duties.
The arrested officials are blamed for giving a permission to export hides and skins in violation of the Customs Code and not watching the receipt of the semi-finished product to Belarus.
According to our information in Russia export privileges for rawhide "givers" (firms, which supply raw material to a producer, pay him the production cost, and take buck finished goods) allowing them not to pay the duty while exporting rawhide for processing with further return of the finished materials to the country, were abolished a long time ago. One of the grounds for the abolishing was the conclusion of Moscow Research Institute of Leather Industry on the impossibility of identifying of the initial rawhide in the processed product (it is impossible to determine whether the imported leather or semi-manufactured goods were in fact produced from the rawhide shipped by this exporter).

Source: Belarus gazeta dated 24.03.03
24.07.2003