Huge haul of smuggled cigarettes

Millions of liri worth of counterfeit cigarettes were seized in a major swoop at the Freeport yesterday, with Customs officials describing it as one of the largest hauls ever in Europe.

Three 40-foot containers, whose contents were registered as DVD players, yielded the largest shipment ever of smuggled cigarettes in Malta.

The first two rows of the containers were in fact stacked with DVDs, but further investigations showed that each container held some 2,000 large boxes bearing an estimated 27 million cigarettes in all.

The containers arrived last weekend from Asia in transit to Algiers. The smuggled goods, fake Gauloises Blondes, were identified thanks to international collaboration and the X-ray machinery donated by the US government.

Tonio Fenech, parliamentary secretary in the prime minister's office, who visited Marsa where the cigarettes were being unloaded, said that according to preliminary investigations the seizure were worth millions.

Mr Fenech said the cigarettes were of an inferior quality and thought to be very damaging to health.

Heaping praise on Customs officials, Mr Fenech said the Customs Department was now sharing information with other countries, which facilitated the seizure of such smuggled goods.

As taxes on cigarettes go up worldwide, tobacco smuggling is on the increase. The police are in the meantime carrying out investigations to establish who was behind the operation.

A spokesman for the Customs Department thanked the Freeport officials for their collaboration. Yesterday's was the last in a string of successes for the Customs department.

In the last months there has been a serious crackdown on counterfeit cigarettes, with three hauls yielding some 24 million cigarettes since December.

Only last Thursday, a considerable quantity of silver jewellery was also seized by Customs officers as it was being smuggled into Malta.

And two weeks ago, Customs officers seized around 3,000 gold and silver items, worth tens of thousands of liri, stacked away in a trailer's false compartment.