[ad_1]
PONTIAN: The Navy police foiled a cigarette smuggling attempt worth RM 52 million on Monday after stopping a foreign freighter southwest of Pulau Kukup, near Pontian.
Bukit Aman Division of Internal Security and Public Order Director Abd Rahim Jaafar said the marine police intelligence unit patrol boats stopped the Mongolian-registered ship at 8.15 p.m. after tracking its movement in waters. from Myanmar.
He said the patrol boats had tried to intervene, but the ship’s captain refused to cooperate and the ship was eventually stopped when it was about 2.9 nautical miles southwest of Pulau Kukup.
“Checks on board the ship found more than 7,000 boxes of smuggled cigarettes, which is the largest seizure in the history of the country,” he told reporters at a press conference here today.
Rahim said police had noticed that the ship had been sailing back and forth from Batam, Indonesia, to the west coast of Johor since last month and was distributing cigarettes to small local boats along the route.
“The ship will try to enter our waters when there are no controls,” he said, adding that the cigarettes were believed to have been packaged in plastic bags before being thrown into the sea for small boats to collect.
Ten members of the crew together with the captain, who are Myanmar and Singaporean citizens between the ages of 22 and 60, have been detained to facilitate investigations under section 135 (1) (a) of the Customs Act 1967, added.
