ACAPMA News
Illegal tobacco shipment a warehouse mix-up: accused
BY JENNA HAND 25 Jun, 2010 08:30 AM
A man who allegedly smuggled more than a tonne of tobacco into Australia in a shipment of soap and bathroom fittings has told a Canberra jury that it was meant to go to Jordan.
Sam Alhassan, of Giralang, is on trial in the ACT Supreme Court accused of failing to declare 147 boxes of tobacco in an attempt to dodge $364,000 in import duty in May 2008.
But yesterday the 37-year-old, who has pleaded not guilty to the charge, said he bought the tobacco in Lebanon intending to send it to Jordan to be processed into fruit-flavoured products.
He said he and an old school friend, Khalil Daruich, met in Beirut on March 13 and spent the next few days driving around the city in Daruich's BMW, buying products to export.
Alhassan told the court they hired a warehouse in which they stored soap, bathroom tiles and about 1000kg of tobacco, and employed local workers to pack the tobacco into empty boxes obtained from the soap supplier.
The court heard the soap and tobacco were packed in identical boxes but placed on different sides of the warehouse, and that all but the tobacco were meant to go into the container bound for Australia.
Alhassan said he was present while the boxes were loaded from the warehouse into an associate's truck and again when they were transferred from the truck into the shipping container, but said he was not involved in the packing process.
He said that when he returned to Australia he arranged for the container to be delivered to a friend in Bruce and enlisted a former neighbour to help unload the goods.
Alhassan told the court that as they were unloading the container, Australian Customs officers and police turned up with lights and sirens, and took him for questioning.
''The scene was just embarrassing for the people who were there,'' he said.
The trial, in front of Justice Hilary Penfold, continues today.
Extracted in full from: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/illegal-tobacco-shipment-a-warehouse-mixup-accused/1868400.aspx?src=rss
