SHANGHAI, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- Twenty smugglers were caught and over 530 containers of LCD screens, weighing more than 10,000 tonnes and worth up to 1.65 billion yuan (about 247 million U.S. dollars), were seized in a joint operation early Wednesday morning, Shanghai Customs said.

Deployed by the General Administration of Customs, 220 anti-smuggling police officers raided the LCD trafficking gang on Wednesday in several cities including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Yueyang and Chongqing.

More than 90 related bank accounts were frozen, with about 302 million yuan of tax evasion involved in the case, according to customs officials.

Investigations found that between August 2016 and June 2018, the suspects imported high-end LCD screens from China's Hong Kong and attempted to ship the screens out of the country, replacing them with defective ones. In this way, they evaded a large amount of import duties and only paid small service fees for customs clearance.

Shanghai Customs has been tracing the smuggled LCD screens since last June with the help of Shenzhen Customs officers.