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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2014
Pair strapped 10 kilograms of jewelry to legs Smugglers fined $10,000 each and jailed eight days; may need to pay $174,848 for return of goods by Martin van den Hemel Staff Reporter There’s good news and bad news for two men who each strapped five kilograms of jewelry worth $1.59 million to their legs last month following a flight to Vancouver from Hong Kong. Despite smuggling $1,589,530 worth of jewelry, they were each fined just $10,000 after pleading guilty to smuggling, and jailed only eight days. The bad news is that they might need to pay up to $174,848 to get the smuggled jewelry back. Michael David Chan and Bo Kwok Siu pled guilty in Richmond provincial court to an offence under the Customs Act. They flew into Vancouver International Airport on Nov. 20 on a flight from Hong Kong. Canada Border Services officers, acting on a tip that a traveller appeared to be concealing goods around his ankles, approached Chan and referred him for a secondary examination. That’s when they discovered six packages of jewelry were strapped to his
legs underneath his pants. The packages contained hundreds of pieces of jewelry with a combined weight of five kilograms. Chan was arrested, but the investigation continued. Investigators realized that Chan was not travelling alone, and gathered information that his companion may have smuggled jewelry in the same way as Chan. They eventually located Bo Kwok Siu who was staying at a local hotel. Members of Canada Border Services’ criminal investigations unit arrested Siu at the hotel and he admitted to hiding jewelry within the hotel room. Investigators were granted a search warrant and found the jewelry— weighing five kilograms—hidden in a garbage bin. The total commercial value for duty of the jewelry was $346,696, but the retail appraised value of the jewelry was $1,589,530. In addition to the fines, they must also pay a civil penalty for the return of the jewelry, ranging from 25 per cent to 80 per cent of the commercial value for duty of the seized goods. “As a result of the diligence of our border services and criminal investigations officers, this case has come to a successful conclusion,” said Lucky Paul, chief of criminal investigations for the Canada Border Services Agency. “(When) someone smuggles jewelry into Canada we recognize that it puts legitimate business at a competitive disadvantage.”
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Practice makes perfect
Matthew Hoekstra photo Kaleigh Chan of the Connaught Skating Club practices at Minoru Arenas Tuesday during a holiday practice session for silver-level skaters. Connaught is the second oldest skating club in Canada, and the oldest in B.C., offering varying levels of skating instruction—for young skaters learning to skate, recreational skaters and athletes interested in competitive figure skating.
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