An approach to the phenomenon of smuggling goods and foreign exchange and Iran's criminal policies

Smuggling goods is one of the crimes against the economic system of a country. The harmful effect of this crime on production, trade, investment, occupation and the reduction of the government’s income is not hidden for anybody, consequently, any country based on its civilization background and its economic and social conditions tries to come up with strategies and punitive reactions to control and fight with this phenomenon. In our country, after the establishment of constitutional monarchy, the legislator considering smuggling to be a crime and its social consequences came up with punishments such as imprisonment, the confiscation of the smuggled merchandise and penalty for those who commit such crimes and put them into. The law in 1312 which was a relatively comprehensive law with the goal of confronting the criminal. In this article, there is an attempt to clarify and analyze the crime of smuggling goods and foreign exchange in the domestic law and a look at it though the criminal policies hoping that by careful examination of the rules and regulations concerning smuggling, to be able to analyze the smuggling of goods and foreign exchanged comprehensively and consequently in 1350 the customs affairs law was ratified and carried out in order to control the goods coming in and going out. By enacting this law the government showed its legal support of the country’s traditional trades governing the society. This law was sufficient enough to confront smuggling goods for a few decades because the scope of smuggling crimes in those days were not at such a high volume that would be considered to be an economic eye- sore worrying the country’s authorities. However, as the time passed by and after the success of the Islamic Revolution especially since 1367 because of the reasons, we will discuss later, the crimes of smuggling goods and foreign exchange have become widespread and deeper, and the negative effects of this problem have absorbed the public’s attention, causing the public’s concerns. According to the research conducted in this matter, the annual volume of smuggling goods in Iran has been between 4-6 billion dollars.