IPOH, Nov 27 — Perak Customs (JKDM) foiled an attempt to smuggle 2.5 million white cigarettes worth more than RM2.1 million on Thursday, as a result of seven days of intelligence-gathering.

The loot in the raid in Pantai Remis and Sitiawan was the biggest in Perak for this year.

Perak Customs director Datuk Abdul Ghafar Mohamad said that his raiding party found the white cigarettes and kretek of various brands believed to have been smuggled in by sea and hidden in the residential premises.

"We carried out surveillance on a two-storey terrace house in Sitiawan, which is fenced and has guards patrolling, and found that the house used to store the cigarettes was uninhabited.

"In the 1.30pm raid, we confiscated 2,568,470 white cigarettes and kretek (Indonesian spice cigarettes) of various brands with an estimated value of RM2,032,372.21 which has not passed Customs,” he said at the Perak JKDM office here today.

Abdul Ghafar added that the second raid was carried out on the same day at an abandoned house in Pantai Remis where they found a total of 127,200 white cigarettes and kretek worth RM100,907.40 placed in the living room.

"Most of the smuggled cigarettes are brought in by sea from Vietnam and stored in the house before being distributed to the local market.

"All the boxes were wrapped in plastic for water-proofing. But no arrests were made. We are still tracking the owner of the premises to help with the investigation,” he said. — Bernama