The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) stated on Tuesday that their officers arrested a Malaysian man, who attempted to smuggle duty-unpaid cigarettes via Woodlands Checkpoint.
The ICA said on their Facebook page that the vigilant officers detected attempted smuggling of illegal cigarettes on May 31. They stopped the 45-year-old driver of the Malaysia-registered bus, which was carrying 1,850 cartons of assorted duty-unpaid cigarettes.
After conducting a search, the ICA officers found those duty-unpaid cigarettes, which were concealed beneath modified floorboards of that vehicle and immediately arrested the Malaysian man. ICA has referred this case to the Singapore Customs for further investigation.
The authority had earlier stated that the officers, stationed at the checkpoints "will continue to conduct security checks on passengers and vehicles to prevent smuggling attempts of undesirable persons, drugs, weapons, explosives or other contrabands."
As per the ICA's Annual Statistics Report 2018, the officers cleared more than 212 million travellers as well as 10 million consignments, containers and parcels.
They also mentioned that while in 2017, a total of 90,327 cases of contraband cases were detected, last year the number increased to 107,771.
"Even with stringent checks and high penalties, attempts to smuggling contraband items into Singapore have persisted," said Commissioner Marvin Sim adding that the number detected at the checkpoints reached an all-time high last year.
He also mentioned that some contraband items may pose some serious security threat to the country and "This is why ICA officers cannot let up on security checks, even the checkpoints are congested."
