Hong Kong Customs seizes live turtles of suspected scheduled endangered species
Hong Kong Customs yesterday (June 12) seized eight live turtles of suspected scheduled endangered species, with an estimated market value of about $16,000, at Hong Kong International Airport.
Through risk assessment, Customs officers yesterday intercepted an air consignment declared to contain clothing, shoes, computer equipment, health supplements and handbags imported from the United States to Hong Kong. Upon inspection, the batch of live turtles of suspected scheduled endangered species was found concealed inside socks in a carton box of the consignment.
The case was handed over to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department for follow-up action.
Under the Protection of Endangered Species of Animals and Plants Ordinance (Cap. 586), any person importing, exporting or possessing specimens of endangered species not in accordance with the Ordinance commits an offence and will be liable to a maximum fine of $10 million and imprisonment for 10 years upon conviction with the specimens forfeited.
Members of the public may report any suspected smuggling activities to Customs' 24-hour hotline 182 8080 or its dedicated crime-reporting email account (crimereport@customs.gov.hk) or online form (eform.cefs.gov.hk/form/ced002).
Hong Kong Customs seizes live turtles of suspected scheduled endangered species Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases
Remarks by SFST on corporate treasury centres at media session
Following are the remarks by the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Mr Christopher Hui, at a media session after attending a radio programme this morning (June 13):
Reporter: Mr Hui, on the action plan (Action Plan to Promote the Development of Corporate Treasury Centres in Hong Kong), you mentioned that you expect, with the pre-approval mechanism in place, the time required could be shorter. Could you elaborate a bit more on that? And does the Government has any target on how many more corporate treasury centres would be attracted to Hong Kong under the action plan? You also mentioned about signing more agreements on the Comprehensive Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreements with more countries and regions. What would the focus be? And how many more places does the current term government aim to sign in the remaining term?
Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury: In fact, if you look at the overall action plan that we have announced, we covered four key areas which can be summarised into the four "T"s, in terms of the tax revamp, tax agreements, targeted promotion, and also talent and dialogue with the market.
Based on the first point about the tax revamp, one of the measures that we plan to introduce is to have a pre-approval mechanism. That is exactly something that we are doing in response to market demand. Because for many of these companies, when they decide to set up a corporate treasury centre in Hong Kong, they need certainty in terms of whether they are going to take advantage of our tax concessions. By having this pre-approval mechanism, we can afford them with the certainty that they need before they consider and also decide to set up such corporate treasury centres here. So we consider this conducive to having more such centres (set up) in Hong Kong. That's number one.
And number two, in terms of the scope or coverage of our current or future Comprehensive Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreement network, as you can see, we just signed one with Cyprus. That's the 58th one that we signed and also it's an EU (European Union) country. Going forward, basically our strategy and also our flow is going to follow the market in a sense that we have to follow where our clients are. For many of these Chinese Mainland companies or international companies going global through Hong Kong, they are going into various types of countries, including those along the Belt and Road. So this is exactly the area that we'll focus on, among others, in order to develop a broader network for such treaties and also to enable such companies to take advantage of the lower taxation, not just in Hong Kong, but also in those countries where we have agreements with.
Reporter: On the number of corporate treasury centres, by how much more do you expect the number will maybe grow under the action plan?
Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury: When a corporate decides to set up or decides not to set up a corporate treasury centre, I think it takes time. That's why what we are trying to do now is set up a rather high-level framework and also action plan in such a way that we can follow up with very detailed and very exact taxation and also other enhancement measures in order to draw more such centres to Hong Kong.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the remarks.)
Source: AI-found images
