4 men arrested, 9,000 cartons of duty-unpaid cigarettes seized
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Ivan Kwee
Anomalies detected in the scanned image of a 20-foot container led to the arrest of four men and the seizure of 9,081 cartons and eight packets of duty-unpaid cigarettes on May 13.
The total duty and goods and services tax (GST) evaded amounted to about $776,550 and $62,280 respectively, the Singapore Customs and the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
The agencies said ICA officers at the Pasir Panjang scanning station suspected that duty-unpaid cigarettes were hidden within the container after scanning it on May 12. They alerted Singapore Customs.
The next day, Customs officers launched an operation at a store unit in an industrial building at Jalan Pemimpin. They saw three men entering the unit after four steel water tanks were unloaded from the container and moved into the unit. The officers raided the unit and found duty-unpaid cigarettes hidden in the water tanks.
Small quantities of duty-unpaid cigarettes and e-vaporiser pods were also found in one of the men's car, which was parked outside the building.
A fourth man was arrested after further investigations revealed that he was involved in the importation of the duty-unpaid cigarettes. The four men are aged between 24 and 48. One man has been charged in court and ordered to be remanded until May 21 for further investigations.
There are ongoing investigations for the other three suspects.
The agencies warned that buying, selling, conveying, delivering, storing, keeping, possessing or dealing with duty-unpaid goods are serious offences under the Customs Act and the GST Act. Offenders can be fined up to 40 times the amount of duty and GST evaded, jailed for up to six years, or both.
