The annual Enforcement Liaison Officer (ELO) conference was held on 1st& 2nd November 2017 in Miami. In attendance were twenty six (26) countries and representatives of WCO Regional Intelligence Liaison Office (RILO) from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Western Europe. The meeting was a joint effort by ODA, CCLEC and member administrations.
This annual meeting is an integral part of the CCLEC enforcement network and WCO National Contact Points. The meeting’s primary objective was to foster closer cooperation with regional and international counterparts and improve networking.
Presentations were made by a Border Force Senior Officer from International Directorate South Americas on Operation Hunter, a representative from Japan Tobacco Industry on tobacco smuggling and a former UNODC consultant, on fuel smuggling. Both the RILOs delivered presentations on work being carried out in their regions.
The JIO presented the report on Operation Caribbean Shield which was held for six weeks in the region. The Operation was focused on small arms trafficking in the region to assess the level of risk at the borders.
Refresher training was also delivered on all the data systems being used such as RCS, SailClear, WCO CEN, nCENand CENcomm.
A summary of findings collated from two questionnaires on fuel and tobacco smuggling formed the basis for two workshop sessions. The main objective of the workshops was to examine the threats and current trends and raise awareness of these revenue evasions threats to customs administrations.
The outcome of this meeting was for CCLEC to build on this awareness and work within the region to combat this high value revenue evasion
