An operation by Customs squads, assisted by a foreign expert, has led to one of the biggest hauls of counterfeit cigarettes in Malta.
The Customs Department's public relations office said that nearly nine million cigarettes of different brands were found at Malta Freeport in a 40-foot container being transshipped from Slovenia to Dubai.
The cigarettes are of the Marlboro, Dunhill and Merit brands and the lesser-known Marble, packed in boxes containing 10,000 cigarettes in 890 cartons.
Customs said it was the most "professional" job in counterfeiting the department had come across so far. Usually, counterfeit items can be spotted immediately but the cigarettes in question were packed perfectly and included details such as the barcode on the packets, cartons and boxes.
It had not been easy for Customs officers to establish that the cigarettes were counterfeits. In fact, the department sought the assistance of an expert who flew in from Switzerland to confirm they were indeed fakes.
The public relations office said that a few days ago, officers from the Customs monitoring unit had identified a container that raised suspicions. It was decided to pass the container through the VACIS X-Ray unit donated to the Customs Department by the US government.
Officers from a Customs team working in connection with intellectual property rights specialists were called in to investigate after it was confirmed that the container was loaded with cigarettes.
After being identified as being fake, the cigarettes were impounded by the enforcement unit of the Customs Department and were yesterday transferred to a security shed for eventual destruction.
Customs said that had the consignment been destined for importation to Malta through the normal legal channels, the cost in VAT, excise duty and Customs duty would have amounted to nearly Lm500,000. An estimate shows that the government's takings from cigarettes amount to Lm10 per carton of 2,000.
The seizure was the second major one this year after Customs impounded another 40-foot container with nearly seven million counterfeit cigarettes in January.
A Customs PR office spokesman explained that although the contents of the container were not destined for the Maltese market, the Customs Department, being a signatory to the Intellectual Property Rights Convention, was obliged to seize them. Items suspected of being counterfeit had to be stopped once they were detected.
A memorandum of understanding was signed between the Customs Department and Central Cigarettes Ltd last year to jointly fight the trade of contraband and counterfeit cigarettes, which costs the government Lm1 million in lost revenue every year.
Counterfeit traffic is considered to be the fastest growing, most damaging form of tobacco contraband.
Some 1.6 million counterfeit cigarettes were destroyed by the Customs Department recently.