Saturday May 21, 12:17 PM - Police in Hong Kong and mainland China havesmashed a syndicate that smuggled thousands of liters of palm oil throughan underground pipeline, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Hong Kong police discovered the 1,000-meter-long pipeline linking HongKong and Shenzhen, an industrial city that borders the territory, andinformed Chinese authorities, the South China Morning Post reported.

After launching an investigation, Chinese police discovered an undergroundoil tank in a village car park. They arrested four men who were loadingoil onto a container truck and seized 40,000 liters (10,567 gallons) ofpalm oil, the report said.

The oil tank and the pipeline were dismantled on Friday.

Calls to Hong Kong police went unanswered on Saturday.

The price of palm oil _ widely used for industries on the mainland _ havejumped since the beginning of the year, making smuggling a highlyprofitable business, the paper quoted an importer in Shenzhen as saying