Sri Lanka Customs has seized a container holding more than 4.5 million illicit cigarettes valued at Rs. 792 million inclusive of taxes, at the Grayline 2 Customs facility in Thotalanga.
The container had been imported from India using false declarations, with the shipment described as paper and photocopying paper, said Additional Director General of Customs (Enforcement) Dakkula Ariyawatta, the Daily Mirror reported.
The consignment was imported by a company based in the Kandana area using fraudulent information, he said. Officers found the cigarettes after inspecting the container following suspicions about the declared contents.
The scale
At Rs. 792 million including applicable taxes, the seizure is among the larger single cigarette interceptions reported this year. The valuation is tax-inclusive, which is the point: the commercial logic of cigarette smuggling lies almost entirely in evading excise duty and VAT, so the declared “value” of such a seizure is dominated by the revenue the State would otherwise have collected.
Misdeclaring a container as paper is a recurring method — paper is a high-volume, low-duty, unremarkable import that attracts little scrutiny and plausibly accounts for the weight of a densely packed container.
Not reported
The filing does not say whether anyone has been arrested, whether the Kandana company was a registered importer or a front, or what penalties the importer faces. It gives no cigarette brand, no country of manufacture as distinct from the port of export, and no indication of whether the consignment is linked to earlier seizures. It does not state when the container arrived or how long it had been at the facility, and no other verified newsroom’s account could be date-verified for citation at the time of writing.