P1.5-M smuggled cigarettes seized

COTABATO CITY — A police anti-smuggling team seized P1.5 million worth of cigarettes from Indonesia, which were being transported by two vehicles intercepted in an operation in a Sultan Kudarat village in Maguindanao del Norte on Monday night.

Local executives and barangay officials in Sultan Kudarat told reporters on Tuesday that four individuals in the two vehicles loaded with imported cigarettes were arrested and immediately detained at a police detention facility in Sultan Kudarat.

Brig. Gen. Jaysen C. De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (PRO-BAR), said on Tuesday combined personnel of the Sultan Kudarat Municipal Police Station and the Maguindanao del Norte Provincial Police Office flagged down the two vehicles only for a routine plain view inspection but impounded both instead when they found boxes of imported cigarettes piled inside.

The imported cigarettes, costing P1.5 million, seized during the anti-smuggling operation are now in PRO-BAR’s custody, to be turned over to the Bureau of Customs for its disposition.

Local officials and traditional Moro leaders in Sultan Kudarat said the four individuals riding the two impounded vehicles had all confessed that they were to deliver the contraband to contacts in different towns in Maguindanao del Norte. — John Felix M. Unson