Tag Archives | trade

Virginia man arrested for trying to ship weapons to Lebanon

w460

Juging by his name, Sam Rafic Ghanem, he seems to be of Lebanese origin, but how stupid can he be? I mean doesn’t he know about the arms trade with Syria through the uncontrolled borders? Even kids here are playing with Klashinkoves, so we definitely need nothing from Virginia!

Sam Rafic Ghanem, owner of an international shipping company with offices in the Washington suburbs, was arrested Saturday after an FBI sting, ABC News said.

The intended recipient of the weapons is not clear, but at one point Ghanem claimed he was recently asked to obtain two guns for an unnamed member of the Lebanese government, according to court documents filed in the case.

Over the past few months, Ghanem and a former employee of his company, Washington Movers International, devised “a scheme to send weapons to Lebanon by hiding them inside automobile parts shipped by the company,” court documents allege.

The former employee, though, was working as “an undercover source for the FBI,” ABC News noted.

Last Saturday, the source picked up Ghanem from his Springfield, Virginia home and drove to Washington Movers International’s offices in Maryland, where Ghanem helped stuff 10 handguns, 10 semi-automatic rifles and 18 “optic devices” into doors and other parts of salvaged vehicles, an FBI agent alleged in charging documents.

The car parts were then loaded into a shipping container, but the weapons hidden inside were “fake,” according to the charging documents. Ghanem was subsequently arrested.

via Naharnet

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Mobile phone prices in Lebanon increasing already

mobile phones

As you all know, and in order to stop mobile phones smuggling in Lebanon, the ministry of telecommunications is now requiring all traders to register the IMEI (a unique ID assigned to each mobile device) of every legally imported mobile phone or tablet.

The collected IMEIs will then be used as of today June 1st to filter the devices that are allowed access to our mobile networks (alfa and touch). So typically speaking, a legally imported mobile phone with its due taxes paid will be allowed to connect to the mobile networks, while other smuggled ones will be denied access since their unique identifiers are not registered at the ministry.

The weakest ring in the process is of course the group of people who will be responsible of the data entry of the registered IMEIs. Since they will be easily able to register and IMEI of some untaxed mobile if there was not much control over them.

As a result, mobile phone prices ended up notably increasing over the last week. For instance, the guy who sold me my mobile was listing the iPhone 16 GB for around $650 since mid-May I guess, then he increased the price 2 days ago to $745. Logically due to the fact that the handsets he’s currently offering were legally imported and subject to some import tax.

Everybody is eventually complaining about all of this, especially that it gets a bit complicated when you buy some used handset from abroad. And I know it’s wrong to complain about a price increase when it’s a result of complying with the government taxation rules, but still, a $100 increase totally sucks!

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