Centre helps protect nations from smugglers

8 February 2007:

 

On an average day 20,000 vehicles make their way through a single Hong Kong border crossing. This is a major headache for the customs officials charged with keeping the border secure – it would be impossible to search everyone, but the decision of who to search cannot be just random.

 

While you might never replace the gut instinct of a customs officer in detecting a suspicious character trying to sneak contraband across boarders, a professional risk management strategy is a key component in the fight against smugglers.

 

Four senior customs officials from Pakistan and Hong Kong visited the campus in January to learn the latest in risk management from the University's Centre for Customs and Excise Studies.

 

"In customs, risk management is all about how you target resources," Alan Murray, who taught the course, said.

 

"You don't want to waste time searching legitimate people and cargo, so we have sophisticated methods of identifying and targeting high-risk individuals."

 

The course was 'mathematics' joked Patrick Leung, divisional commander of strategic intelligence and support in Hong Kong Customs' Intelligence Bureau, revealing the science behind risk management. As Pakistani colleague Iqbal Munneeb explained, the right numbers would give away a suspicious cargo.

 

"We know how much a shipping container weighs and we know what it should weigh if it's loaded with carpets, for example," he said.

 

"If it's much heavier than it should be then we know it doesn't contain what it says on the manifest. If it's much lighter we would be suspicious that an exporter would waste money by not filling a container."

 

"A weight outside the range we expect would identify a container as high risk and we'd search it."

Mr Muneeb said Pakistan had moved from a legislated responsibility to check every single consignment to a risk management approach, with startling results: less searches but a higher detection rate.

 

"Before the searches were a ritual," he said.

 

"Now we search only 4 to 6 percent of containers, but we have a detection rate of 25 per cent."

Now Mr Muneeb and colleague Irfan Sarfaz are working to refine their country's risk management model with the help of the CCES.

 

"The advantage of this course is it's not just academics introducing the concepts of risk management, the teachers are from customs and that makes the course very practical," Mr Sarfaz said.

 

Irfan Sarfaz, deputy collector, Model Collectorate of Customs, Custom House Karachi Muhammad Iqbal Muneeb, additional collector, Model Collectorate of Customs, Custom House Karachi HK Customs and Excise Department, Intelligence Bureau, Leung Tak-yin (Patrick Leung) Divisional Commander, Strategic Intelligence and Support HK Customs and Excise Department, Intelligence Bureau, Chan Wing-kin, group head (risk assessment).