Russia's Euroset Says Police Seize 167,500 Handsets, Cites Violations"

MOSCOW, Mar 31 (Prime-Tass) -- Russian police have seized 167,500 mobile handsets worth 530 million rubles from Russia?s largest mobile handset retailer Euroset, Euroset said in a statement Friday.

Following four days of examining imported handsets at customs, the company obtained all the necessary documents for the imports, Euroset claimed. However, the company's merchandise was seized by police without providing any copy of documents stating that the seizure took place, Euroset claimed.

Euroset said that it had sent a complaint about the police's actions to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, Russian Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev and General Prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov.

Euroset said that on March 21 it received 167,500 Motorola handsets from Singapore. Between March 25 and March 29, customs officials at Sheremetyevo Airport and representatives of the Federal Tariff Service closely checked the merchandise and issued an approval to import the batch. While the company transported the merchandise from an airport terminal, the lorries were stopped by two dozen police officers, who claimed the merchandise had been illegally imported and started holding their own examination, Euroset said.

Without paying attention to provided documents saying that the merchandise had been recently checked and approved, the police officers decided to seize the entire batch and transfer it to Kamos-T company, which was authorised to store the batch for the police, Euroset said. The company is licensed to sell merchandise illegally imported to Russia and confiscated in Moscow and the Moscow Region, Euroset said.

Euroset said that the reason for the raid may be a lack of activity coordination between law enforcement bodies, unfair competition from Euroset's competitors, or blackmail.

Russian police started fighting illegal imports of mobile handsets in mid-2005. Following a number of raids, police have seized several batches of mobile handsets. Reportedly, the seized handsets were later given to several companies authorized to sell illegal merchandize. However, the handsets were transferred at dumping prices with the price for Philips mobile handsets, for example, set at about U.S. $2. Market experts believe corrupted officials could have illegally sold some of the seized handsets without transferring the raised money to the budget.

(27.1626 rubles - U.S. $1)

End"

Posted to the site on 1st April 2006