THE Bureau of Customs (BOC) in the Port of Zamboanga destroyed P183 million worth of smuggled cigarettes that were seized in various operations since September 2020.
A payloader crushed more than 5,200 master cases of cigarettes. Firefighters then doused the cigarettes with water and disposed of these in a sanitary landfill in Barangay Salaan, Zamboanga City on Monday, December 7, 2020, the BOC said in a statement.
District Collector Segundo Sigmundfreud Z. Barte Jr. said it was the third batch of smuggled cigarettes that were destroyed.
In May 2020, the BOC also destroyed illegal and fake cigarettes, raw materials and counterfeit internal revenue stamps worth P254 million.
In September 2020, around P1.5 billion worth of smuggled cigarettes were destroyed.
BOC-Zamboanga has seized more than P2.2 billion worth of various illegal commodities from January to November 2020, Barte said. (SunStar Philippines from PR)