CG Compliance Team makes seizures worth N200m

No less than three trucks of foreign rice, vegetable oil, assorted vehicles as well as second hand tyres worth more than N200 million have been intercepted in the last two weeks by the Comptroller General of Customs Complaince Team.
Following the heat on rice smuggling through the land borders, the smugglers have introduced the ingenuity of re-bagging the smuggled foreign rice using locally-produced bags.
Investigations showed that the smugglers use “Labana” rice bags to repackage the product and to deceive unsuspecting Nigerians in their bid to bring in such products and as a cover to beat Customs’ security checks.
Labana rice is a local product produced from the firm of Senator Adamu Aliero, former governor of Kebbi State. Other bags produced locally which are used by the smugglers to repackage the smuggled products include ‘Tommy-Tommy’, ‘Rev-Star’; ‘Tomato Arosa Elephant and Stallion brands’; all imported from Thailand.
These trademark brands are ordinarily imported through the nation’s seaports as allowed by law with duty payment. It was revealed that the Comptroller General of Customs Compliance  Team led by one Chief Superintendent Bello uncovered the new smuggling antics when it impounded the products along Lagos-Ibadan trade routes.
Most of the re-bagged rice were moved into Lagos and the western parts using the creeks around Iyana Satch, and Agboju areas of Lagos State. “They print the Stallion/Elephant bags and fill them with foreign smuggled rice, a practice that runs counter to government economic policy”, an officer who sought for anonymity stated.
Other seizures include state-of-the-art cars of 2017 models, such as Hilux, Prado Land Cruisers, Porch and Mercedes Benz, as well as 1198 kegs of 25 litres vegetable cooking oil imported from Malaysia.
Just about two months ago, the Compliance  Team impounded more than 20 brand new Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) valued  more than N1.6 billion. All the seized products are now deposited at the Government Warehouse (GWH) of the Federal Operations Unit in Lagos.