BUTTERWORTH: Cigarettes and liquor worth RM3.6mil have been seized following a raid by the Customs Department in Bukit Mertajam here.
State director Datuk Rohaizad Ali said the seizure was made during a raid under Ops Petasan on an unoccupied warehouse in Jalan Berapit at 9am on March 13.
Enforcement officers found 86,800 sticks of cigarettes and 55,606 litres of beer and liquor piled up in the warehouse and on a trailer lorry.
“The syndicate hid the untaxed cigarettes and liquor in an unoccupied warehouse to evade detection, and we believe the goods were meant for distribution locally.
"Nobody was in the warehouse during the raid,” he said during a press conference at the department’s enforcement office in Perai on Wednesday (April 15).
Rohaizad said checks also found that the Customs duty stamp stickers on the liquor bottles were fake, although the QR codes on the stamps led to the official duty stamp website.
He added that all items had been seized for further investigation, with the total value, including duties and taxes, estimated at RM3,606,065.
The case was being investigated under Section 135(1)(d) of the Customs Act 1967 for possession of uncustomed or prohibited goods.
“If convicted, offenders may be fined not less than 10 times the value of the goods or RM100,000, whichever is higher, and not more than 20 times the value of the goods or RM500,000, whichever is higher, or jailed between six months and five years, or both,” he said.
Rohaizad said the cigarettes and liquor are classified as prohibited imports under the Customs (Prohibition of Imports) Order 2023.
