As squid-fishing boats go, it was unusual. It contained neither fishing equipment, nor squid, but the boat raided by customs officers at a port in southwest Japan held a precious cargo nonetheless – 206kg of gold ingots, worth about £6.5 million.
It was the biggest haul so far in an intensifying war between the Japanese authorities and smugglers. Lured by rising prices and growing demand for gold from investors, groups of foreign and Japanese criminals are bringing in precious contraband, by boat, plane and even concealed in ladies’ underwear.
Six men, including a member of the notorious Inagawa-kai yakuza gangster syndicate, were arrested in June of last year, after the private jet which they flew from Macau to the southern island of Okinawa was found to be carrying 110kg of ingots worth £3.5 million.
A spot-check in 2014 revealed four 1kg ingots in the suitcases of two other known yakuza travelling from Hong Kong to the southwest city of Fukuoka.
Four South Korean women were arrested at Kansai airport near Osaka last summer, with £950,000 worth of gold weighing down their undergarments.
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The latest haul was found yesterday in the small port of Karatsu on the Japanese island of Kyushu, a favourite destination of smugglers because of its proximity to South Korea and Taiwan.
An 8 per cent tax on gold imports into Japan is driving smuggling. Countries such as Hong Kong do not levy such a tax, which means that by buying overseas and selling in Japan without paying tax, smugglers immediately make an 8 per cent profit.
Interest rates are close to zero in Japan, and many ordinary savers are looking for alternatives to keeping their money in the bank – and lucrative ways of investing cheap credit. In the past five years, the value of gold in yen has risen by nearly 15 per cent.
As the value increases, so does the temptation to smuggle. Japan’s ministry of finance recorded seven cases of gold smuggling in 2010. In 2015, the number was 294. In 2014, 177 busts brought in a haul of nearly 700kg of gold worth about £22 million – a potential tax dodge of £1.8 million. Of those cases, 135 involved smuggling from Hong Kong, followed by 88 from South Korea and 27 from Singapore.
Robberies of gold are also on the rise. A gang disguised as police officers stole 160kg (worth £5 million) in July last year. They claimed to be investigating a smuggling case and took the bags of gold away from two men who were transporting them to sale. Six men were arrested for the crime last month.