Accused fined Rs. 400,000 for 5 smuggled cigarettes

A suspect pleaded guilty on Tuesday for the possession of 5 smuggled sticks of Marlborough cigarettes, and was fined Rs. 400,000 by the Gampaha Magistrate. The case was carried out by the Weeragula Police. 

Sri Lanka has seen a surge in detections of smuggled cigarettes by law enforcement agencies over the last couple of months, with approximately 2.1 million sticks being detected in the month of October alone.   On 10 October, Sri Lanka Customs detained a container carrying 1,040,000 smuggled sticks at a container warehouse in Peliyagoda. Subsequent to this, on 12 October, Customs officials at the Bandaranaike International Airport recovered 29,600 smuggled cigarettes worth approximately Rs. 1.6 million from an inbound passenger on a Gulf Air flight, travelling to Sri Lanka from Dubai via Bahrain. In a separate joint operation between the Police and Navy, 3 suspects and a vehicle were detained in Hambantota while transporting 7000 smuggled cigarettes on 13 October. 

With one of the highest cigarette prices in the world, Sri Lanka has become a hotbed for cigarette smugglers, due to relatively low penalties and high rewards. A recent study carried out by academics from the Open University of Sri Lanka and the University of Kelaniya uncovered that between 2017 and 2018, approximately 583 million smuggled cigarettes entered the country, causing the Sri Lankan Government a staggering revenue loss of Rs. 17.98 billion.