Sri Lanka Customs has arrested 13 Chinese nationals at Bandaranaike International Airport in Katunayake after seizing 189,600 foreign cigarettes valued at Rs. 28,440,000 in their luggage, officials said on Tuesday.
The group had arrived from Bangkok on two flights and was intercepted at the arrivals terminal carrying 22 travel bags, inside which Customs officers discovered the consignment. Airport authorities said the suspects are businessmen aged between 28 and 45 years.
The seizure follows a sustained cluster of Chinese-national cigarette interdictions at the airport, including the arrest of 14 Chinese nationals on May 28 with cigarettes worth Rs.20 million and a separate 18-person Chinese smuggling ring detected on May 30, in addition to earlier individual cases involving Dubai–Emirates routings and a Rs.34 million Chinese-businessman case.
Customs has been intensifying interdictions at BIA arrivals against organised smuggling of cigarettes — a category that combines high duty avoidance value with relatively low detection risk on multi-bag passenger routings — and Bangkok has emerged as the recurring outbound staging point for the Chinese-national operations.
Source: Newswire.
