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A UN Office on Drugs and Crime report says non-state armed groups profit from cigarettes smuggled into Mindanao from Indonesia and Vietnam, as the PNP reports ₱12.63 billion in total contraband seized nationwide this year — three-quarters of it illicit tobacco that evades excise tax.
A sworn affidavit from an alleged middleman names two Bureau of Customs personnel as having received payment for 225 boxes of allegedly smuggled cigarettes, days after HPG and BOC personnel clashed during a warehouse raid in Santa Maria, Bulacan.
Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla told an international tobacco summit that "endemic" corruption is the precondition for the illegal cigarette trade that has cost the government tens of billions of pesos in lost excise taxes, pointedly arguing that enforcement should target the operators behind large-scale smuggling rather than small vendors.
