Following Wijeyadasa s revelation in Parliament Excise detects booze bottles with fake stickers at countrywide locations

By Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana 

 Weeks after Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe’s revelation in the Parliament, Excise Department in countrywide detections seized counterfeit security stickers pasted on liquor bottles.  

 Sleuths attached to several Excise stations seized liquor bottles with fake security stickers from the areas of Thalawa, Nelubewa, Thambuttegama and Kahatagasdigiliya during the weekend.  

 A large stock of liquor bottles were taken into custody from wine stores in the said areas pasted with a forged security sticker that does not give the relevant details of the product when they were scanned with the special mobile application. 

 
 The Excise Department introduced a special app called ‘Excise Tax Stamp Validator’ a few months ago to the public to determine the genuineness of liquor bottles one would buy from the market.  

 The security sticker was introduced to the industry by the department to avoid scammers from releasing substandard liquor to the market, thus not paying the government taxes.  
 Justice Minister Rajapakshe said in the Parliament during the last budget sessions that a forged Excise tax stamp had entered the market and the perpetrators are evading paying tax revenue amounting to billions of rupees.  

 He further revealed that an Indian company blacklisted even in its own country had been entrusted with the tender of printing millions of these security stamps, which has a high probability of printing a forged sticker at the same time and released to certain private sector racketeers.  

• The Excise Department introduced a special app called ‘Excise Tax Stamp Validator’ a few months ago to the public to determine the genuineness of liquor bottles one would buy from the market