0 a person whose job is to make certain travellers are not taking goods into a country without paying taxes --
1 a person whose job is to check travellers' bags to make certain they are not taking goods into a country without paying taxes: --
2 a government official whose job is to check that goods leaving or entering a country are legal: --
When goods have to be examined, considerable time can sometimes pass before they are presented to the customs officer.
It may well be that there are justifiable grounds to allow a customs officer to stop someone on a hunch.
Yet when one leaves such countries a police officer or a customs officer begs one's fountain pen as a present.
In other words, the onus is there transferred from the customs officer to the person selling.
She informed the customs officer that they were indeed household effects and that her intention was to hang them in her bedroom.
Imagine this conversation when you get to the customs and show it to the customs officer.
A customs officer ' stuffs ' and so does a minister.
The traffic through the gate must have increased, and with it the income for the customs officer in charge.