Customs seize 8.5m contraband cigarettes

Over 8.5 million cigarettes have been seized at the Freeport by Customs officials, from a container that was declared to be carrying household goods.

A spokesman for the Customs Department said the cigarettes were in a container that was on its way from the Far East to North Africa.

On the local market, they would be worth some Lm1.3 million to the government in excise and VAT.

The case started to unfold a few days ago when Customs officials were examining documents of containers that were expected to arrive here.

A small number of containers were short-listed for further investigation and when the ship carrying them arrived they were placed under observation.

Some of these containers were released but others were subjected to more thorough scanning. When one of the containers was examined by the Vehicle and Container Inspection System, the officials noticed discrepancies between the documents accompanying the container and the X-Ray of its contents.

The 40-ft container was opened and officials found 816 boxes of undeclared cigarettes each containing 10,000 London cigarettes, and 49 boxes containing 10,000 Karelja cigarettes.

The container was supposed to have contained 1,055 boxes of household goods, but only 182 such boxes were in the container.

The cigarette haul was the second in three weeks. Last month Customs officials located a 20ft container containing more than 3.3 million undeclared cigarettes.