EU warns UK-centered China import scam may shift to Hungary, Greece

European Union anti-fraud investigators suspect Greece and Hungary may have become the main EU centers of a multi-million-euro scam involving imports of Chinese clothing and footwear that uses the infrastructure of China's new "Silk Road".

The large-scale fraud, which involves underdeclaring the value of imported goods to pay lower duties and sales taxes, was first uncovered in Britain, where it had gone on for years, prompting the European Commission this year to demand that London pay 2.7 billion euros ($3.1 billion) in lost customs duties to the EU budget.

Officials at the EU anti-fraud agency OLAF said they now suspected the scam could have shifted to Hungary and to the port of Piraeus in Athens, which has been majority-owned by China's state-owned COSCO Shipping since 2016.

Hungarian and Greek customs data show a surge of undervalued clothing and...