COTABATO CITY— Vigilant merchants and policemen on Sunday intercepted a truck carrying P2.7 million worth of imported cigarettes in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte.
The confiscated cigarettes were consigned to buyers in Cotabato City and in towns in the south of the province.
Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, on Monday said that the smuggling attempt was foiled by personnel of the Sultan Kudarat Municipal Police Station, led by Lt. Col. Esmail Madin, with the help of businessmen vending Philippine-made cigarettes in establishments that they legally operate in this city.
Madin said that members of the business community informed them about the supposed delivery to buyers around of the 150 boxes of imported cigarettes with Berlin brand. These were said to have come from the Zamboanga peninsula, brought in from Indonesia by Filipino seafarers.
He said that their investigators and cooperating businessmen placed the value of the confiscated cigarettes, to be turned over to the Bureau of Customs, at around P2.7 million.
The driver of the hauler truck loaded with imported cigarettes, John Rex Garban, and his helpers, Jason Lanoria and Abubakar Nawal, are now detained at the Sultan Kudarat MPS, according to Madin.
The entrepreneur–lawyer Ronald Hallid Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, said that legitimate traders of cigarettes in the autonomous region are losing a lot from competitors selling cheaper cigarettes from abroad clandestinely.
“We are not even sure if these were produced according to high quality standards the way cigarettes are produced in the country, with health warnings on each individual pack,” Torres said.
Nobleza said PRO-BAR is thankful for the business sector in the Bangsamoro region for helping them address smuggling of Indonesian-made cigarettes into the six Bangsamoro provinces that have porous coastlines that smugglers use as transshipment spots for their illegal merchandise from abroad, shipped through the open seas in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.