Transit trade is also called transit trade or re-export trade. Traditionally, it means that the trade of import and export goods is not carried out directly between producer and consumer countries, but through the transfer of international trade by third countries. The characteristics of entrepot trade are that the two ends are separated from the outside three streams: the buyer and the seller are outside the country, the middleman is inside the country, and the flow of goods, funds and orders are not uniform.
The entrepot trade is a cross-border trade with "two ends out". The trade background is relatively easy to "construct", and the authenticity is not easy to distinguish. In addition, the goods flow of transit trade does not match the capital flow, the goods transport generally does not pass through domestic ports, and there is no official information such as declaration forms or entry record list to prove that it is difficult to judge the authenticity of its trade background from the customs data. The attitude of the foreign exchange bureau to the entrepot trade has always been to "strictly guard against false trade". The central bank and the foreign exchange bureau will conduct a large number of special checks and inspections on the implementation of the authenticity and compliance examination of the bank's entrepot trade every year.
If a domestic enterprise is investigated for violating the requirement of "trade authenticity", one of the penalties that may be faced is "downgrade", that is, the foreign exchange bureau decides to reduce the classification level of the enterprise in the "directory of foreign exchange revenue and expenditure enterprises". As mentioned in Article 3.2 above, if a domestic enterprise is downgraded from Category A to Category B, it will be suspended from dealing with offshore re-sale of foreign exchange receipts and expenditures business, which means that the re-export business arrangement has lost its feasibility for the downgraded enterprise.
Violation cases: The foreign exchange bureau will report the cases of foreign exchange violations that it has investigated and dealt with from time to time every year. So far this year, the SAFE has reported dozens of cases of foreign exchange violations by individuals, enterprises and banks through its website. In addition, according to news reports, the SAFE has also reported cases of foreign exchange violations by banks in private. Among them, the following two are representative cases of trans-shipment trade violating the authenticity requirements.
Company violation: Ningbo Dacheng International Trade Co., Ltd. case of foreign exchange evasion
Case information: From August to September 2015, Ningbo Dacheng International Trade Co., Ltd. colluded with several overseas companies, used other companies to cancel bills of lading, fabricated entrepot trade contracts, concluded transaction prices 5 to 20 times higher than the market price, and transferred funds illegally to foreign countries for 15 times, amounting to nearly 120 million US dollars.
Penalties: The company's actions seriously violate the authenticity requirements under the Regulations on Foreign Exchange Control and other laws and regulations, that is, the transaction documents of foreign exchange receipts and expenditures under international trade must be authentic and effective. Because of the huge amount and the bad nature of the violation, which seriously disturbs the order of the foreign exchange market, the foreign exchange bureau issued a high Zui ticket this year, i.e. RMB 22.81 million yuan.
Bank Violation: Agricultural Bank of Shanghai Fengxian Branch Purchases Foreign Exchange in Transit Trade with False Documents
Case information: From November 2015 to January 2016, the Shanghai Fengxian Branch of Agricultural Bank of China purchased eight foreign exchanges in advance for an enterprise in the case that all the bills of lading submitted by the enterprise were forged and there was no real background for its transshipment trade, amounting to 71.89 million US dollars. After purchasing foreign exchange, the enterprise did not actually use foreign exchange, but deposited all foreign exchange into the bank as pledge, and then discounted RMB funds by bank acceptance draft to the affiliated company.
Penalties: The bank failed to effectively verify the identity of customers, the authenticity of trade documents and their consistency with current account remittances. It cooperated with enterprises to arbitrage through false transactions, which violated the authenticity requirements under the Regulations on Foreign Exchange Control and other laws and regulations. According to law, the foreign exchange bureau confiscated 240,000 yuan of illegal income from the bank's eight business transactions, imposed a fine of 1 million yuan, and ordered the bank to stop operating the business of selling foreign exchange for one year.
Summary: As a way of intermediary trade, entrepot trade is the trend and result of further refinement and upgrading of trade division. However, some illegal enterprises through false or even construct entrepot trade, through which to achieve illegal flow of cross-border funds, will alienate entrepot trade into an illegal channel of arbitrage and arbitrage.
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