Cops seize P97.4-M worth imported cigarettes in Maguindanao del Norte
COTABATO CITY, Philippines — State anti-smuggling operatives seized P97.4 million worth of imported cigarettes during a two-day operation in Parang, Maguindanao del Norte, officials reported on Thursday, January 8.
The contraband, consisting of 2,483 boxes of cigarettes from Indonesia, were found buried in a private land in Barangay Gumagadong Calawag in Parang, a seaside town in Maguindanao del Norte, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, and Parang Mayor Kahar Ibay separately told reporters on Thursday that the smuggled cigarettes, in large boxes wrapped with plastic sheets, were excavated, using farm tools and a backhoe, by policemen and personnel of the Bureau of Customs and members of the Parang Municipal Peace and Order Council in an operation that started on Tuesday morning and ended late Wednesday.
De Guzman said his subordinate-officers in the Regional Mobile Force Battalion 14 and the Parang Municipal Police Station facilitated the transport, using seven trucks, of the seized smuggled cigarettes, costing P97.4 million, to their headquarters in Camp SK Pendatun in Barangay Making in Parang.
Policemen were dispatched early Tuesday to Barangay Gumagadong Calawag after villagers and local executives hinted about the stockpiling by two merchants of smuggled cigarettes in a warehouse in the area, but found the facility empty.
The policemen tasked to inspect the warehouse were about to leave, but continued their search around after villagers reported that a group of men, speaking to each other in the Iranun vernacular, had buried large boxes containing Indonesian-made cigarettes in a vacant lot nearby a week before.
“We are very grateful to the barangay folks and the local executives and the employees of the office of the mayor in Parang for informing us that there was this big volume of imported cigarettes stored in that barangay,” De Guzman said.
Officials of the Parang police force said the anti-smuggling operation that resulted in the seizure of the 2,483 boxes of smuggled cigarettes, worth P97.4 million, was assisted by personnel of PRO-BAR’s Regional Intelligence Division, agents from the Bangsamoro regional field office of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.
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