Bt67m cigarette smuggling ring busted in Hat Yai

More than 2,000 crates of smuggled foreign-manufactured cigarettes, worth about Bt67 million, were seized in downtown Hat Yai district of Songkhla province in a major crackdown by a joint force of police, military personnel, customs, excise and local officials.

Fourteen suspects were arrested, and 11 vans in which the contraband cigarettes were stored were also seized.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who was campaigning in the area ahead of the upcoming election, chaired a press conference in Hat Yai to announce the crackdown.

He told the media that the contraband network was the biggest in the southern region, adding that if all the smuggled cigarettes had been distributed in the market, they would have endangered the health of many people and caused extensive damage to the state through the loss of tax revenue.

He said that about 90% of foreign cigarettes sold in Songkhla and several southern provinces were contraband, adding that the illegal network had constantly devised new strategies to avoid detection by the authorities.

These included storing smuggled cigarettes in a fleet of vans instead of a warehouse, and opening retail outlets as fronts for selling the contraband.

The prime minister said investigators will question all suspects in an attempt to identify other parts of the network and the ringleader.