SINGAPORE: Three separate attempts by smugglers to bring in duty-unpaid chewing tobacco and cigarettes have been thwarted by authorities over the last three days, authorities said here the other day.
Two Malaysian men were arrested separately by Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officers upon their arrivals at Woodlands Checkpoint, after duty-unpaid chewing tobacco and contraband cigarettes were found concealed in their Malaysian-registered vehicles.
At 6.40pm on Wednesday, officers uncovered 6,330 sachets of chewing tobacco tightly rolled and concealed inside six covered plastic pails in the luggage compartment of a 40-year-old suspect’s bus, the ICA said.
And at 2am on Friday officers found 1,827 cartons of duty-unpaid cigarettes hidden in sealed packages in the tool box compartment of a 29-year-old suspect’s lorry. These were in between declared consignments of bottled drinking water.
The potential customs duty and GST evaded by the two suspects amounted to about S$208,900.
The drivers, the seized exhibits and the vehicles have been handed over to Singapore Customs for further investigations.
In a separate incident on Friday, a joint operation by the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and the ICA netted three men, aged between 24 and 57, for suspected involvement in smuggling duty-unpaid cigarettes via Singapore’s waters.
Officers from Police Coast Guard and ICA uncovered 960 cartons of duty-unpaid cigarettes on a vessel at the sea off Jurong Port. The haul is worth more than S$117,000, the SPF and ICA said in a joint statement.
The total customs duty and GST evaded added up to S$99,200. The cigarettes and the vessel have been seized, and an investigation by Singapore Customs is ongoing.
