‘Customs agents foil smuggling of 152,000 cigarette cartons’

AMMAN — The Jordan Customs Department (JCD) on Sunday said its personnel thwarted an attempt to smuggle around 152,000 cartons of different brands of cigarettes into the country.

The owner of three containers, which arrived at Aqaba Port from China, claimed that the contents included medical beds, a senior JCD official said.

“Our agents became suspicious of the containers’ contents and decided to conduct a thorough search,” the JCD official told The Jordan Times.

The search yielded 3,040 boxes that contained the smuggled cartons of cigarettes, according to a JCD statement.

“These were real brands of cigarettes and it seems whoever wanted to smuggle them inside Jordan wanted to evade paying taxes,” the customs official explained.

“We have seized the boxes, imposed around JD3 million in fines on its owner and referred the case to the customs prosecutor general,” he said.

This is the second cigarette smuggling attempt to occur in the same location in less than a month.

On November 29, JCD agents, in cooperation with security bodies, thwarted an attempt to smuggle around 147,150 cartons of different brands of cigarettes into the country. In that incident, the owner of the three containers claimed that the contents included medical beds, sports equipment and water filter machines.

In May this year, authorities thwarted what they described as one of the largest smuggling attempts in the history of the JCD.

The cigarettes entered the Kingdom in nine container trucks that came from the Jabal Ali area in Dubai and were said to be containing cement.

The smuggling attempt was discovered at the Wadi Al Yutum customs checkpoint.

The fines amounted to over JD7 million. 

The senior official said customs agents, in cooperation with other security agencies, have seized more than 40 containers that contained smuggled cigarettes since the beginning of the year.

“We are constantly thwarting the smuggling of all sorts of goods, including cigarettes. This does not mean that smuggling has increased, but it shows that we are we are very firm and adopt accurate inspection procedures when it comes to goods entering our borders,” the official said.