Navy seize P63.9M worth of cigarettes, sugar, rice in Mindanao operations

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Navy teams seized P63.9 million worth of cigarettes, rice and sugar from abroad in seaborne operations in the past three weeks in the territorial seas of the adjoining Sulu and Tawi-Tawi island provinces.

Senior police officials in Sulu and in Tawi-Tawi separately confirmed to reporters on Saturday, January 24, that personnel of units under the Western Mindanao Naval Command (WMNC) involved in the anti-smuggling operations have also impounded the three small seacrafts carrying the contraband.

One of the three boats was loaded with P45.4 million worth of rice and sugar from Malaysia. Navy personnel found a total P18.5 million worth of cigarettes from Indonesia aboard the two other boats.

Officials of the WMNC and Army Lt. Gen. Donald Gumiran, commander of the Western Mindanao Command, separately told reporters that the three boats were sailing to Sulu, via the seas in Tawi-Tawi in the Bangsamoro region, from Malaysia and Indonesia and were intercepted one after another with the help of local executives in both island provinces.

WMNC officials and Gumiran separately said on Saturday that the smuggled cigarettes confiscated by Navy personnel had been turned over to the Bureau of Customs for its disposition.

“These successful operations are testaments to the vigilance of our operating elements in preventing smuggling in Western Mindanao,” the WMNC’s headquarters in Zamboanga City pointed out in an official statement that media outfits in Region 9 and in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao received on Saturday.  

WMNC officials said they are grateful to municipal and provincial officials in Sulu, which is under Region 9, and in Tawi-Tawi, one of the five provinces in BARMM, for supporting their anti-smuggling operations in the past three weeks that led to the confiscation of P63.9 million worth of imported rice, sugar and cigarettes.