Businessman jailed for his part in NZ’s largest cigarette smuggling case
A businessman has been jailed for his role in the country’s largest cigarette smuggling case. The man and his company have interim name suppression and appeared at the Auckland District Court on Thursday after earlier admitting charges of defrauding customs, making erroneous entries in customs documents and selling goods without paying duties. The operation involved the smuggling of over 19 million cigarettes into Auckland, hidden inside office cabinets imported...
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Australian food exporters face regulatory roadblocks in China
By Michael Smith Nov 11 2019 / Financial Review Shanghai | Chinese regulators are delaying the approval of new licences to Australian dairy and beef exporters looking to increase sales to China, in the latest sign that diplomatic tensions are hurting trade with Australia’s biggest trading partner. Numerous sources told The Australian Financial Review that companies exporting agricultural products to China faced increasing difficulty in securing Chinese regulatory approval...
Read MoreTrade Me dragged feet on GST rort, retailers say
By Nikki Mandow Aug 19 2019 / Newsroom This story was originally published in the New Zealand Listener and is republished with permission. Customs has cracked down on a GST rort, leaving Trade Me to pay back thousands of dollars to customers who had new cameras and smartphones seized at the border. But why was our biggest online marketplace so slow to act? It was just an everyday transaction...
Read MoreCustoms arrangements with Singapore and Canada
Friday, 28 June 2019, 12:49 pmPress Release: New Zealand Government Hon Jenny SalesaMinister of Customs 28 June 2019 PĀNUI PĀPĀHOMEDIA STATEMENT Customs arrangements with Singapore and Canada to benefit New Zealand traders Minister of Customs Jenny Salesa has welcomed new customs arrangements between New Zealand, Singapore and Canada that will streamline trade and benefit traders. The Mutual Recognition Arrangements (MRAs) to recognise supply chain security standards of respective trade programmes...
Read MoreOff the cuff: An international trafficker of tea bags
May 13, 2019 15:15 Mick O’Reilly New Zealand is a long way away — it’s like travelling to the end of the Earth. It’s 11 hours on a plane from Hong Kong, and even that’s another 11 hours on a plane from London. Between jet lag and changing time zones, it turns what used to be my regular 12 midnight into high noon. You can watch football over breakfast...
Read MoreInterview: New Zealand should be more active in BRI cooperation: NZ expert
New Zealand should be more active in participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) cooperation, otherwise New Zealand may miss one of the largest multilateral economic projects of this century, said an expert on Tuesday. Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-16 12:24:12|Editor: Yurou by Lu Huaiqian Simon Draper, executive director of Asia New Zealand Foundation, who attended the first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in 2017, is set to leave...
Read MoreWiseTech buys Sydney company SmartFreight for $55 million
By Yolanda Redrup OCT 17 2018 / Financial Review Logistics software company WiseTech Global has made its third local acquisition in the last year, buying Sydney-based transportation marketplace SmartFreight for up to $55 million. The acquisition is the 24th for the company since July 2017, as the business aims to create “mini WiseTechs” across the globe. SmartFreight helps businesses optimise their logistics for parcel or pallet (less than a...
Read MoreAEC 2015 will have no immediate impact…. but is extremely important for ASEAN
Given the extensive and wildly enthusiastic press coverage which greeted AEC 2015, the economic cooperation agreement between the ten ASEAN nations which came into effect on Jan 1 2016, one could be forgiven for thinking that the skies across the region would by now be being criss-crossed by eager executives of the world’s largest companies, all ready to hammer out deals and get their seat at the ASEAN table....
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