Customs: Nearly 5,000 cartons of smuggled cigarettes

Customs Director Jesus Muña said yesterday that customs inspectors counted a total of almost 5,000 cartons of smuggled cigarettes, many of which were hidden beneath potato chips or crackers in boxes shipped from the Philippines, more than doubling the initial count of over 2,000 cartons.

The CNMI government would have lost almost $100,000 in excise tax had the Customs Services Division not discovered these undeclared cigarettes.

Each carton of cigarette is taxed $20.

Muña said the inspection of the contents of a 20-foot container was completed at past 5pm on Tuesday.

“It’s almost 5,000 when they finished inspection. It took a while to inspect the whole container. They had to count them [cigarette cartons] piece by piece,” Muña told Saipan Tribune.

He said the consignee, Pacific Jun Corp., a wholesaler, will be prosecuted and fined.

Customs, he added, has already referred the matter to the Office of the Attorney General.

This is the largest cigarette haul in recent CNMI history, said Customs officer John Paul Sablan, who has been with the division for 13 years.

The last time Customs seized a large volume of illegal cigarettes was in 2008, and that involved only over 350 cartons of illegal cigarettes from China.

Most of the cigarettes seized this week were Philippine-made Philip Morris and Marlboro that were labeled “for domestic use only” and “not for export,” making them illegal to be brought to Saipan, besides being undeclared.

Customs said the only items declared in the invoice were chips or crackers, body soap, toothpaste, condiments such as soy sauce, and women’s sanitary napkins.

Lawmakers called on the Fitial administration to restore the 80-hour workweek for customs inspectors, given the critical nature of their function.

Rep. Ray Yumul (R-Saipan), in a separate interview yesterday, said he is now working on legislation to auction off items that Customs confiscated, but items deemed counterfeit will be destroyed.

“Imprest fund will be created to cover salaries of customs employees,” Yumul said, adding that he had discussed this with Lt. Gov. Eloy S. Inos a few years back, when Inos was still Finance secretary.

Customs’ X-ray van also broke down, and would need $30,000 to $50,000 to repair. Without this X-ray van, customs officers have to manually inspect cargo at the seaport, which is time consuming and requires more inspectors.