Overview
- ARCA said Thursday that its customs arm, the Dirección General de Aduanas, seized alcoholic beverages valued at more than $67 million in coordinated operations across cities including Roldán, Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Paraná and Córdoba.
- Most seizures were recorded as 'tenencia injustificada con fines comerciales' under Article 987 of the Customs Code, which allows fines of up to five times the market value of the goods and could push penalties toward roughly $308 million.
- The agency explicitly moved enforcement into 'secondary' customs zones by carrying out ex‑post controls in shops, warehouses, domiciles and courier networks and by scanning parcel shipments and international transit points.
- The operations uncovered concentrated loads at retail-level outlets (for example 271 bottles in Roldán and 63 bultos in Mar del Plata) and logistics channels (1,300 cans found in a Córdoba parcel from Jujuy and interceptions at the Posadas‑Encarnación crossing).
- Industry groups have long warned that illicit imports damage local producers and public revenue, and reports cited in coverage estimate contraband near 5% of GDP and annual fiscal losses around US$2.3 billion, a backdrop that helps explain the current enforcement escalation.