BARMM cops seize P97.4-M imported cigarettes in Maguindanao del Norte

COTABATO CITY — 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.

The contraband, consisting of 2,483 boxes of cigarettes from Indonesia, were found buried in a private land in Barangay Gumagadong Calawag in Parang.

Brig. Gen. Jaysen C. De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, and Parang Mayor Kahar P. 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.

Mr. 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 to their headquarters in Camp SK Pendatun.

Policemen were dispatched early on 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,” Mr. De Guzman said. — John Felix M. Unson