The Australian Customs Service on Wednesday announced that it has detected unprecedented quantities of smuggled cigarettes and tobacco over the past year destined for the Australian domestic market.
The Customs said in a statement that since January, Customs has foiled some 40 separate attempts to smuggle cigarettes and tobacco into Australia, mostly in sea cargo containers through Port Botany in Sydney, capital of the southeastern state of New South Wales.
Up to 95 million cigarettes and 236 tons of tobacco have been seized, amounting to attempts to evade revenue in excess of 100 million Australian dollars (86 million U.S. dollars).
The volume of detections in 2007 represents a 14-fold increase in the quantity of tobacco and double the quantity of cigarettes compared to 2006.
This reflects the world-wide rise in cases of large-scale organized cigarette and tobacco smuggling, the Customs said.
"The largest cigarette seizure was more than nine million cigarettes into Sydney from the United Arab Emirates while the largest tobacco seizure was over 22 tons into Melbourne from Vietnam," the Customs said in the statement.
"Since January, 30 people have been arrested; 48 convictions for tobacco smuggling achieved; with penalties and costs totaling approximately 3.9 million Australian dollars (3.35 million U.S. dollars) imposed to date and large quantities of cigarettes and tobacco destroyed," the Customs said.
Source: Xinhua
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