SABAH RCI Rampant smuggling of contraband cigarettes into Sabah costs Malaysia huge losses in terms of duties over the years, the royal commission of inquiry on illegal immigrants in Sabah heard today.

Asked by commissioner Henry Chin if the figure runs into "billions" of ringgit, Sabah Customs Department senior assistant director Mohd Fadzly Abdullah @ Purna Limbu Padamlal Limbu said "yes."

He also answered in the affirmative when Chin asked if most involved in cigarette-smuggling are "foreigners".

Mohd Fadzly testified that based on Sabah Customs Department statistics of arrests made from 2007 to May 2013, duties which could have been collected from the seized items for the period was about RM7.8 million.

Chin, a former Kuala Lumpur police chief, then remarked that the standard formula used in estimation is that for each case which surfaces, there are five more unknown.

"So we are talking about RM35 million losses in duties," he said, noting also that four out of 10 cigarette packs in Sabah are contraband.

‘Contraband cigarettes cost half the price’

According to Mohd Fadzly, contraband cigarettes sold on the sidewalks in Sabah mostly by foreigners, are attractive to smokers as they cost half the price of ordinary cigarettes.

He said that this is because they escape the import and excise duties and sales tax which amount to RM0.53 per stick for clove cigarettes (kretek) and RM0.51 per stick for regular cigarettes or ‘white cigarettes’.

He said the smugglers bring the goods in using “large speedboats with three or four engines with 250 horsepower per engine”, entering Sabah by sea via places like Tawau and Labuan.

He said the cigarettes come from places like Nunukan or Sungai Nyamuk in Indonesia, both an under 45-minutes ride away from Tawau. 

“According to our statistics, most involved are Filipinos or Indonesians, followed by Pakistanis, with the largest group being Filipinos,” he said.

He said that those nabbed who can produce MyKad also appear to be “descendents of Filipino ethnics”.

Mohd Fadzly said that while his department works with other agencies, including the marine police and the navy to curb smuggling, it still is a game of “cat and mouse”.

Nevertheless, he said, his department’s priority is to prevent the cigarettes, which make up at least 60 percent of smuggled items into Sabah, from entering the state and has requested for more manpower for this purpose.

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