Seaborne drug trafficking worries Customs

The possibility of drug trafficking at sea on small craft, particularly during summer time, is one of the biggest concerns of the newly appointed Customs director general, John Mifsud.

Mr Mifsud believes that human and material resources of the Customs Department should be merged with those of the police and the Armed Forces of Malta to fight this very real risk.

Mr Mifsud, 56, who was director for European Union matters before taking up the top Customs post, said the department was willing to train AFM personnel on drug detection techniques.

Mr Mifsud said Customs work had changed a lot and today the trend was to simplify procedures while continuing to exercise the necessary controls to avoid evasion.

"We need to build anew and to base our activity on risk management that would be backed by strong intelligence," Mr Mifsud said as he emphasised the need for compliance by importers.

The risk element would always exist and therefore the Customs intelligence unit analysed importers and classified them according to the existing risk element.

"A most important procedure is the audit trail. Customs has to ensure that imports are released without delays but it has to continue exercising controls even after the release of cargo.

"Towards this end a post clearance audit team was set up to audit certain imports even after cargo is released from customs," Mr Mifsud said.

Asked for his views on EU membership, Mr Mifsud said that for the Customs Department, membership did not make much difference because modernisation was a process that was taking place around the world.

The department, he said, had received pre-accession funds in recent years amounting to around Lm4 million which helped it to modernise and upgrade procedures.

He said some may have the wrong perception that Customs would have its validity diminished if Malta joined the EU.

This was far from the real situation, because being situated in the southernmost external border, Malta would serve a role to protect the whole EU market, he said.