Airport customs officers ‘overwhelmed’ by Chinese e-commerce

The Liège court heard a case in which customs officers at the city’s LGG airport, “overwhelmed by the massive influx of Chinese e-commerce”, took harsh measures against importers, accusing many of them of fraud, only to lose many of the cases when they went to court.

Ironically, investigations by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) resulted in a fine of €251 million being imposed on Belgium in 2021 for failing to take sufficient action to combat import fraud on its territory.

Recently, LGG-based ECDC Logistics, founded by a Chinese businessman, won 12 judgments against Belgian customs after being accused of undervaluing imported goods, amounting to several million euros in unpaid duties. Another LGG-based company, BeCargo, reportedly won four legal battles, three of them because of procedural errors.

Last week, the Liège Criminal Court cleared the Liège Cargo Agency (LCA) and its CEO, Eric Bruckmann, of customs-related offences.

The court heard testimony from several customs officials who highlighted the “chaos” that engulfed Liège airport at the start of the e-commerce boom with China, with a major problem being how to price the huge volumes of low-value imports.

It emerged that customs had assumed that the value of goods arriving from China would be set at between 30% and 40% of their selling price on e-commerce platforms – a method that was later rejected. It was claimed that this caused some confusion among importers.

LCA’s lawyer commented: “Customs has betrayed the trust of the operators: they were allowed to operate like this for a significant period of time, only to be told the opposite years later.”

According to Belgian media reports, Mr Bruckmann is due to appear in court again in January to answer other charges brought by customs authorities.