July 3, 2015 Letter from the Head of the Manifest Department
Lebanese Republic
Customs Administration
Manifest Department
Issuance No: 1684/م/2015
To be returned to the Head of Service
In reference to the referral of the Directorate General of Customs no: 2354/2015 dated April 28, 2015, [and] to the referral of the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cassation no: 860/2015 dated April 21, 2015, concerning supplying the Central Criminal Investigations Department with the all the information related to the material and merchandise which we need an approval to destroy and which are present in the customs warehouses in Beirut Port, especially those stored there since 2010 and before, we hereby attach lists of the damaged goods with some of the available information with the exception of Warehouse no 12 where it was impossible to do an inventory because it is filled with bags of impounded ammonium nitrate, there pursuant to the letter no 429/2014 dated September 26, 2014 issued by the Urgent Matters Judge, and the Warehouse no 9 auction since the fate of the merchandise unloaded there is in the hands of the competent department given that they are meant to be sold at public auction.
The damaged goods mentioned in the attached lists are detailed as per the following:
- Goods which records are still open to date.
- Goods transferred from the closed warehouses 20 and 21 according to the official transport receipt.
- Goods with unknown records.
These goods are in turn divided into:
- Goods abandoned by their owners, and which were put on sale at public auction and their fate was not determined by the competent party back then.
- Goods impounded by the customs pursuant to customs cases or placed in the penal consignation record for violating the applicable laws and regulations.
- Goods transferred long ago from the two closed warehouses 20 and 21 to the remaining customs warehouses.
- Goods separated from grants offered to Lebanon in the aftermath of the War of July 2006 because they expired or for non-conformity issues, that is why most of these goods were abandoned without registration at that time given the above-mentioned circumstances.
- Goods impounded pursuant to judicial decisions, and which cannot be destroyed until a judicial decision allowing this is issued.
- Impounded medicines and food supplements.
- Goods with unknown origin that were damaged, and it was impossible to determine their nature since they were stocked since long time, or they were moved from a warehouse to another.
Therefore, and according to the above, and since the merchandise at stake is threatening the public health and the environment, and given that since we assumed the functions of this department, we are striving to activate the goods destruction process which is time consuming because we need to obtain the approval of all the parties concerned with the destruction, including ministries, administrations, municipalities, etc, in addition to the related expenses, therefore we propose to approve the following:
First: obtaining just the approval of the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cassation on an exceptional basis to destroy all the goods mentioned in the attached lists without recourse to other stakeholders, to save time and accelerate the destruction process.
Second: Destroy the goods at the expense of the ‘Gestion et Exploitation du Port de Beyrouth’ since it is directly involved in the management of the warehouses and the preservation of the goods stored there, however the ministry of environment should determine the place where the destruction process should take place.
Third: Concerning the medicines and food supplements, we reiterate our suggestion in our referral with the same number dated March 6, 2015, to contract a foreign country to destroy the various types of medicines and food supplements, in addition to the damaged goods which is not possible to destroy in Lebanon given the lack of necessary resources.
Please find attached a copy of our referral no: 1684/م/2015, dated March 6, 2015 in addition of the entire file.
Beirut, July 3, 2015
First Controller of the Manifest Department
Nehme Brax
[Signature]