ZAMBOANGA CITY - The Bureau of Customs (BOC) Zamboanga port led the destruction of some P110-million worth of smuggled cigarettes outside the Customs warehouse in Zamboanga City on Thursday, May 5.
BOC Zamboanga port collector Sigmundfreud Segundo Barte Jr. said the contraband is composed of 3,110 master cases and 1,372 reams of imported smuggled cigarettes.
The items were among those intercepted by the BOC and other law enforcement units in Zamboanga Peninsula and the Zamboanga-Basilan-Sulu-Tawi Tawi (Zambasulta) region from December 2021 to March 2022.
The cigarettes were drenched with water by the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) and crushed by a pay loader before they were thrown to a sanitary landfill.
The destruction of contraband items is based on an instruction by Customs Commissioner Rey Leonardo Guerrero to intensify the apprehension of smuggled items in the region.
Barte thanked the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police, the National Bureau of Investigation and other concerned agencies that helped the bureau to prevent the entry of illegal goods.