Three Chinese nationals were arrested at the Bandaranaike International Airport on Thursday morning while attempting to smuggle a consignment of Chinese-made cigarettes worth over Rs. 8.3 million into the country, Ada Derana reported.
The three men, aged 35, 38 and 50, were stopped by Sri Lanka Customs officers and personnel from the Customs Narcotics Control Division as they tried to walk out through the airport’s Green Channel — the route reserved for passengers with no goods to declare.
Upon inspection, officials found a total of 279 cartons containing 55,800 cigarette sticks concealed inside six pieces of luggage, according to the broadcaster.
The seizure is the latest in a long run of foreign-cigarette smuggling cases at Colombo’s main airport involving Chinese nationals. In the past two weeks alone, Customs has booked 18 Chinese nationals over a Rs. 24 million haul on May 30 and 13 Chinese nationals arriving from Bangkok with cigarettes worth Rs. 28 million on June 2, following a string of earlier arrests including 14 Chinese nationals with cigarettes worth Rs. 20 million on May 28 and six Chinese nationals stopped with stock worth Rs. 11 million.
Sri Lanka Customs has flagged the steady volume of Chinese-origin cigarette smuggling — typically routed via courier passengers attempting to clear the Green Channel — as a sustained organised-crime trend at the airport.
