Vehicle Customs Clearance Vladivostok

Intro

Bringing a car into Russia can be a bit of a daunting task. In our situation it was a car that we had just bought at an auction in Japan and were about to put offshore license plates on. The car had never been to the country it was registered in. As it turned out clearing our car through customs at Vladivostok turned out to be much easier than getting the vehicle out of Japan.

Customs Clearance Agent

I would go as far as to say that if you are not from Russia (and this may apply even if you are) you absoutely need to use a local customs clearance agent to clear your vehicle through customs once it arrives at Vladivostok Port.

For starters the customs clearance office is nowhere near the Port, it is deep into a myriad of narrow streets which seemed to be somewhere up near Eagle Nest. It would be very difficult to find this place on your own if you don't speak good Russian.

We checked online for recommendations used Links Ltd. to manage the customs clearance process as they have very positive feedback smattered across various blogs & forums of 2 and 4 wheel travellers who have made the trip. 

Yuri & Svetlana were our two contacts at Links and I cannot recommend them enough. I think Yuri owns the business though I never thought to ask him. Both speak English, are friendly and most important of all they know what they're doing and get the job done quickly.

Pre-Arrival 

In our initial correspondence with Yuri I explained that the vehicle we wanted to bring into Russia was registered offshore in a somewhat unusual location. I was a bit concerned that the unusualness of this location may cause some problems with customs clearance. Yuri assured me that this would not matter. Russian customs legislation is not concerned with how other countries register vehicles, so long as the vehicle is legally registered and you have the paper work to prove it this is all that matters.

In order for Yuri to arrange the customs clearance in advance we sent through scans of my passport, the vehicle registration documents and a picture of the VIN number on the car (we just sent one of the sticker on the door pillar and this was sufficient) and I think a front and rear shot of the vehicle. 

Arrival in Vladivostok

When we got off the boat in Vladivostok Yuri was waiting for us at Arrivals, we packed our bags into his Subaru Forester and he drove us up to the Customs Offices. Here we met with his colleague Svetlana who was waiting for us with some documents. We also bumped into two bikers we had befriended on the ferry, Marcello & Satoro (sorry if I've spelled your name wrong buddy). If you've never heard of Marcello Carucci he is a great character, an indomitable Italian school teacher who travels the world on Honda motorbikes during the summer holidays. He's been doing this successfully for so long (over 1.4 million kilometres!) that he is now a bit of a celebrity in Italy and has numerous sponsors for his trips, including Honda. He doesn't speak a word of English and we don't speak any Italian, this didn't matter at all. Check out his website and facebook page. 

Back to business... we spent about half an hour at the Customs Office, signed some forms which Svetlana pushed through the little window to the Customs ladies. Marcello, Satoro & I stood in the small waiting area with her while Yuri waited outside. The Customs ladies looked quite stern, as seemingly all Russian civil servants behind desks do, though the mini-skirts and stilettos made these particular ones a bit less intimidating. 

As the documents for each of our vehicles were checked we each moved to the window to show your face and prove you are the person in the passport picture for that vehicle. Some more forms were signed and when it was my turn Svetlana and the Customs lady had a bit of a laugh - she translated for me 'She says you look a bit better in real life'... my passport picture is a bit of a shocker so I suppose it was a sort of compliment, a Russian civil servant compliment. 

After the documents/face check we were free to go for the rest of the afternoon. Marcello, Satoro and I went out to Yuri's car where my girlfriend Ianthe was waiting for us and Yuri dropped us off to our respective hotels. He then arranged times to pick us up in the morning. He even came in to the hotel reception with us to help carry our bags and make sure we got through check in ok. Sound man, he could have just called taxis for us and given us an address to make our way to the next day. 

Collecting the Vehicles

The next day Yuri turned up at the hotel as arranged, actually a little bit early. We first went off to pick up some third party insurance for the car. This is compulsory for driving in Russia. We were arranging insurance for our trip with a Belgian company but it had not come through yet. I had also read somewhere online that you need to buy your third party insurance in Russia and that 'green card' insurance from a company overseas is not acceptable - for this record this is wrong, you can get green card insurance for Russia from an overseas company. More on this in future posts.

We arrived at an old Kruschev-era functionalist looking block of flats, it looked like a solely residential building but it seems there is also an insurance company somewhere in there. Yuri went in, sorted it out and 15 mins later we were insured for a month for the princely sum of about US$30.

From the insurance flat we went on to the customs clearance area at the port, Here we again met with Svetlana who had Marcello & Satoro in tow. Some big steel gates were opened and we were through to where they keep the vehicles that come off the boat, it looks a bit like a multi-storey car park.

One of the customs guys drove our car down and handed me the keys, I think we signed some more papers, hurriedly stuck our number plates on with outdoor adhesive take we had brought with us from Sydney (the front plate is still crooked to this day as we didn't want to make a fuss at the customs depot and just lashed the plates on as fast as we could). 

We said our goodbyes and the steel gate opened - welcome to Russia.