Cops seize P77-M smuggled cigarettes in Lanao del Sur

COTABATO CITY — Policemen, backed by soldiers and local executives, seized P77 million worth of smuggled cigarettes in an anti-smuggling operation in Barangay Liyangan in Picong, Lanao del Sur on Sunday.

Captain Steffie P. Salanguit, spokesperson of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (PRO-BAR), and Col. Caesar P. Cabuhat, Lanao del Sur provincial police director, separately told reporters on Tuesday that 15 men who were then preparing to transport the contraband to retailers in different towns in the province were arrested, now in the custody of local executives and officials of the Picong Municipal Police Station.

Police officials in the province were quoted in radio reports on Tuesday as saying that the anti-smuggling operation was launched after Maranao community leaders reported to local executives and to Lanao del Sur Governor Mamintal A. Adiong, Jr. the stockpiling of smuggled cigarettes in a makeshift warehouse in Barangay Liyangan.

Barangay Liyangan is a seaside town Picong, a known drop off point for smuggled cigarettes from Indonesia, brought in by small seacrafts sailing via the territorial seas of the island provinces of Sulu in Region 9 and in Tawi-Tawi in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

Ms. Salanguit said a group of men were sorting and piling the boxes containing the Indonesian-made cigarettes at their hideout, supposedly for delivery then to retailers in BARMM’s adjoining Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte provinces and in its regional capital, Cotabato City, when policemen and soldiers, guided by local executives, arrived to confiscate the illegal merchandise.

Local executives said there is a group of merchants in Picong and in nearby Malabang, Lanao del Sur using Barangay Liyangan as transshipment point for the smuggled cigarettes that they distribute to different areas, supplied by contacts in Sulu and in Tawi-Tawi.

Police Brig. Gen. Christopher M. Abecia, director of PRO-BAR, said on Tuesday that they will turn over the cigarettes to the Bureau of Customs. — John Felix M. Unson