Customs seize Lm400,000 worth of undeclared cigarettes

Customs has seized Lm400,000 worth of cigarettes smuggled in a container at the Freeport over the weekend.

Describing the operation as one of the most successful to date, Customs said it seized 21,000 cigarette cartons.

The ship carrying the container, Ville De Taurus, entered the Freeport a few days ago. Its last port of call was Chiwan in China.

As soon as the container was unloaded, Customs officials swooped on the container to inspect its contents.

A spokesman said that according to the ship's documents, the container had to have a load of 'radial tyres' for Malta.

Instead, they found the container packed with cigarettes in plain cardboard boxes.

The spokesman said a total of 414 boxes, each containing 50 cartons, were seized. Each carton contains 200 cigarettes.

"The operation is one of the largest ever made by Customs as we have seized just over four million cigarettes," he said.

He said their next step now was to see if the cigarettes were counterfeit.

The last cigarette haul was made on April 30, when Customs officials seized a 40-foot container packed with counterfeit cigarettes, also at the Freeport.

The container had also been shipped from China on a ship destined for Libya.

A man had also been arraigned in court last March shortly after the police seized a considerable quantity of cigarettes being sold under a false brand name.

Police sources had said that the fraud squad had been receiving reports that Rothmans blue cigarettes sold from vending machines were of a very inferior quality and hard on the throat.

Over 1,000 packets had been seized from different machines around Malta.

The sources had said the cigarettes were likely to have been made in China and imported illegally.