Cotabato cops seize P8-M worth smuggled cigarettes

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Policemen and local officials on Thursday, March 20, seized some P8 million worth of imported cigarettes piled inside a van-type 10-wheeler truck found abandoned along a highway in Kabacan town in Cotabato.

Radio reports on Friday morning, March 21, in Cotabato City and nearby provinces in Central Mindanao stated that investigators from the Kabacan Municipal Police Station, led by their acting chief, Lt Col. April Lou Palma, are still trying to identify the owner of the truck carrying the contraband,  parked for a long time along a stretch of the Cotabato-Kidapawan Highway in Barangay Kayaga. 

Local officials and barangay leaders have a common theory that the driver of the truck and his helper possibly fled after they were notified by buyers in roadside areas in Kabacan, to whom they were to deliver the Indonesian-made cigarettes, about the presence of policemen in checkpoints along the route that they were to pass through. 

Policemen and personnel of the Kabacan local government unit immediately hauled the 220 large boxes containing cigarettes with Indonesian brands to their municipal police station, to be turned over to the Bureau of Customs for its disposition.