Customs destroy Rs.748Mn worth illicit fags

Pic by Nimalsiri Edirisinghe 

• The consignment had been sent to a consignee in Ragama under false documents

By Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana   

Sri Lanka Customs yesterday destroyed a large stock of smuggled cigarettes worth over Rs.748 million at the crushing machines of the Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC) compound in Kotahena. 

Officials of the Customs Revenue Task Force (RTF) seized a 40 foot container carrying the stock of illegally imported cigarettes from Dubai on June 22, 2022.   
The consignment had been sent to a consignee in Ragama under false documents and had contained 9,940,000 sticks of a foreign brand of cigarettes ‘Matador’.   

The contraband had been valued at Rs.748,006,076 (Rs.748 million) and the tax revenue Sri Lankan Government would have missed if the stock went undetected was calculated at Rs.695 million.   

Following the Customs inquiry the contraband was forfeited and ordered to be crushed at the CTC compound. Thus, senior Customs officials including its Director General Sarath Nonis as well as top CTC officials including Legal and External Affairs Director of British American Tobacco (BAT) Zahrah Cader witnessed the event.