Seizure of a Truckload of Smuggled Mobile Phones in Aladdin Mall, Tehran

According to Fars News Agency, on Monday night, a truckload of smuggled mobile phones was seized from Aladdin Mall on Jomhouri Street in Tehran by judicial agents. The estimated value of this shipment is reported to be between 2 to 3 billion tomans. Previously, at the end of July, ISNA reported that a shipment of smuggled phones worth 5 billion rials was seized in Kermanshah by police forces. According to Manouchehr Amanollahi, the police chief of Kermanshah province, this shipment had entered Iran from Iraq and was destined for Tehran. In recent days, the publication of news regarding the implementation of the mobile registration plan in the media has raised concerns among mobile sellers and buyers in Iran. Part of the registration plan, according to Hossein Fallah Jooshghani, the head of the Regulatory Authority's Supervision and Regulation Department at the Ministry of Communications, involves registering phones in the customs system before entering the country. Meanwhile, according to Jooshghani, these phones must also be registered by the importer in the Ministry of Industry and Mine's system so that when the phones reach the final consumer, they can be tracked based on the activation code in the market. According to this official from the Ministry of Communications, this plan has been implemented on a trial basis since Sunday, August 3.