'Extortianate fees' for aid aircraft are nothing new. I have told this tale on the Hercules thread but will precis it here. When I was involved with 48 Sqn out of Changi in 1970 we did relief ops to East Pakistan,now Bangladesh.
When we landed there the customs wanted to charge us duty on the aid supplies, the fuel in our tanks and the oil in the engines. They also tried to insist that before we airdropped aid we had to land and offload the stores for inspection and assessment of duty.