Lima: Almost 100 thousand 'bambas' cigarettes were going to enter the capital hidden in interprovincial buses

Members of the PNP reported that they had the Golden Beach brand logo, even though these are no longer manufactured, and their value would exceed 75 thousand soles.

In Pucusana, a district that makes up the province of Lima, agents of the Peruvian National Police (PNP) discovered that an interprovincial bus was trying to smuggle thousands of cigarettes of dubious origin.

According to Colonel Carlos Alberto Aguilar Díaz, head of the Customs Crimes Investigation Division of the Fiscal Police (Divida), the boxes of cigarettes were hidden in different compartments of a passenger bus that was about to arrive in Lima.

According to authorities, these hundreds of packs of adulterated cigarettes were smuggled into the country through the border with Bolivia. Seeking to continue on their way to the capital of Peru, and evade police controls, the ringleaders of the plan chose to hide the illegal products in a cove next to the luggage hold.

“Likewise, we have found large quantities of contraband cigarettes inside the driver's cabin, behind where the radio is placed,” the aforementioned colonel revealed.

This was discovered thanks to the agents thoroughly reviewing the B6E-953 license plate unit, belonging to the company Guardianes del Cosmos, which had left from Desaguadero to Lima.

The adulterated cigarettes, which had the Golden Beach brand logo, despite the fact that they are no longer being produced by the formal industry, were manufactured without any health control in Paraguay and would have a value of more than 75 thousand soles.

“In this way they evade and evade police control from the start in the south of the country. But, at the Pucusana control, where the Tax Police carries out an exhaustive control and review of all means of transportation, we have found these contraband cigarettes,” said the head of Divida.

According to PNP members, this is the way in which criminal organizations related to smuggling in the country commonly try to transport products throughout the territory.

It should be noted that, as part of the efforts to combat the crime of smuggling, agents from the Customs Crimes Directorate of the Tax Police will continue to carry out operations at the Pucusana checkpoint.

Puno: Higher smuggling rate
The National Superintendency of Customs and Tax Administration (Sunat) reported that smuggling in Peru moves an average of 600 million dollars annually. It should be remembered that this activity is based on entering products into the country without paying customs duties and other regulations.

Along these lines, Sunat pointed to the Puno region as the main smuggling gateway to Peru. According to their data, of the total products that enter the country illegally, 40% enter through the southern region.

This means an average of 231 million soles smuggled into Peru every year. Likewise, it was known that products from Bolivia enter this region, mostly food and fuel.

In addition, it is also used as a transit area for trade carried out in the Iquique Free Trade Zone (Zofri), where manufactured goods come from,

For its part, the constitutional province of Callao is in second place with 31% of the total contraband that enters national territory, which totals US$ 185 million.