According to report from European Union (EU) anti-fraud agency OLAF, investigators have recouped EUR 30 million from a Chinese clothes rules of origin export scam, says a report. An OLAF probe of Bangladesh clothing origin certificates issued since 2005 showed “hundreds of thousands” were false – and in fact cargoes had come from China. The fraud was to help exporters evade EU import controls on Chinese goods reimposed temporarily in 2005, after their abolition in 2004 had led to a surge in China clothing exports. As a least-developed country, Bangladeshi exports get privileged often duty-free access to EU markets, so customs authorities recovered around EUR 30 million in duties due for goods actually made in China. The probe was sparked, said the report, when the reintroduction of China export quotas prompted a “sharp drop in EU imports from China but a corresponding spike in imports from Bangladesh”, so that “the scale of the imports did not match the manufacturing capacity of the country.”                                                                  Source: Just-Style

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