HONG KONG, July 6: Hong Kong authorities said on Sunday they had smashed a cross-border smuggling network that ferried electronic goods to mainland China through a 600-metre-long tunnel.

“It is the first of its kind to have been detected,” the city’s customs department said in a statement, adding that 12 people had been arrested in connection with the operation.

Police and customs officers in the former British colony on Friday discovered the opening of the tunnel in Ta Kwu Lin, near the border with the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen.

Goods were smuggled through the tunnel – which measured just six inches in diameter – using an elaborate system of fibre-optic cables and electronic pulleys, a spokesman for the customs department said.

He estimated that as much as 10 million Hong Kong dollars (1.28 million US) in electronic goods could be smuggled through the tunnel each night.

Hong Kong and Chinese authorities have already seized about 8.4 million HK dollars in goods, including mobile phones, computer motherboards and hard disk drives from sites on both sides of the border.—AFP