Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Casablanca – From May 30 to June 3, the US government held training sessions for 30 Moroccan customs officers at the Customs Training Institute in Benslimane.
The initiative — as announced by the US Embassy on Twitter — focused on preventing the smuggling of dangerous chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials.
Funded by the U.S. State Department’s Export Control and Related Border Security Program, the training is being carried out by four US Department of Energy-affiliated professionals, including a nuclear chemist and a biologist.
David Fisher, deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Morocco, visited the training location to witness the four American specialists’ training in person.
During his visit, Fisher also met with the leadership of the customs training center, a cutting-edge facility that opened in early 2020 and served as a regional training hub for customs officials from across Africa.
According to the US embassy, the US and Moroccan governments will continue to collaborate to establish training programs at the center, as part of their broader US-Morocco security collaboration.
Morocco has recently made significant efforts to combat contraband smuggling.
In 2021, customs services in Morocco confiscated significant amounts of contraband goods worth MAD 152 million ($15 million), compared to MAD 242 million ($24.5 million) in 2020, as reported in the yearly survey of the Administration of Customs and Indirect Taxes (ADII).
During the same year, on the other hand, the National Customs Brigade conducted 30 targeted interventions on several cases of fraud, resulting in the recovery of smuggled products worth MAD 31 million ($3.1 million).
