On possible reason for State Customs Committee's reluctance to put confiscated goods up for sale

Baku/18.07.22/Turan: Every year the State Customs Committee destroys tons of food, clothes, drinks, cigarettes, medicines and other industrial products, reports to the press about the confiscated contraband goods burned in the presence of the commission.

While in other countries medicines, food and even cars seized from smugglers are handed over to orphanages, the army, and the disadvantaged part of the population, in Azerbaijan, near Sumgayit, bonfires are burning what could save a person's life.  While the decision 237 adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers on 19 October 2012 allows and regulates the holding of open auctions to sell customs-confiscated goods to the population and firms.

Smuggled cigarettes are confiscated, in particular, on the borders of Azerbaijan. Orhan Ismayilov, general director of Ganja Finest Tobacco MMC, wrote to the "Azerterminalkompleks" Association of the Customs Service in June 2022 with a proposal to put the confiscated cigarettes up for open competitive sale (auction). The reply was that cigarettes without excise stamps (or with counterfeit excise stamps) could not be sold and had to be destroyed.

Another letter informed Ismailov that non-excised contraband cigarettes were dangerous to health and therefore should not be sold in retail chains. As for safety, Ismailov has an official response to his inquiry from the All-Russian Research Institute for Tobacco, Flax and Tobacco Products in Krasnodar, which says that the high combustion temperature of tobacco (up to 900 degrees) causes the bacteria it contains to burn. For this reason, unlike food products, there are no normative documents for determining microbiological indicators anywhere in the world.

In any case, as Safar Mehdiyev, recently dismissed from the post of Chairman of the State Customs Committee, confessed in an interview: "... Last year (in 2020, Ed.), we gave almost all the tobacco products and medicines confiscated during attempts to smuggle them into the country illegally to the Defense Ministry for the needs of our troops.  

If microbiologically harmful products are handed over to soldiers and officers, then what can stand behind the fact that the State Customs Committee, having legal regulatory documents, does not conduct a competitive sale of confiscated goods, including cigarette products?

Businessman O. Ismailov in a letter addressed to Turan indicates addresses in Baku, where contraband cigarettes are openly sold in the street. There are reasons to believe that these goods fall into the shadow sale from the State Customs Committee's vaults.

A specific case of online sales of contraband drugs , illegally exported from the State Customs Committee, and revealed on April 30, 2018, is shown in this video. The culpable customs officers have been "reassigned."
Entrepreneur O. Ismailov believes that in order to prevent the illegal transfer of confiscated goods to the trade network, the SCC should switch to systematic tenders for the sale of confiscated goods to Azerbaijani companies.

The absence of excise stamps is not always evidence of the danger of the product. After special commodity expertise, smuggled goods, often made by eminent consumers, can be sold to businessmen for legal sale to the population of Azerbaijan.-0-