John Culatto
THE Rock’s authorities are clamping down hard on smugglers with more arrests being made this week.
Three people have been detained in total, the first on tobacco charges and two others for having tried to send illegal drugs by mail.
In the first incident, a man driving a vehicle loaded with tobacco was spotted at Eastern Beach on Monday.
“Officers of HM Customs Flexible Ant-Smuggling Team intercepted the vehicle at Line Wall Road which had previously been seen acting suspiciously in the area of Eastern Beach,” said HM Customs.
“A search of the vehicle revealed a total of 147 cartons of tobacco which was then seized.”
The driver, a Spanish national was arrested for having a commercial quantity of cigarettes.
Under the Tobacco Act 2013 this is set to 2,000 cigarettes, which equates to ten cartons.
In this respect, he was also charged with transporting cigarettes without a licence.
He has since been released on bail to appear in court on April 27.
Drugs
Two other people, a British woman and Spanish man were arrested for possession and exportation of Class A and Class B drugs.
It followed investigations by Customs of parcels which were thought to be suspicious by the post office in February 2019.
When these parcels were examined they contained approximately 2.37 grams of Class A and 90.75 grams of Class B drugs.
Sending drugs via mail is considered one of the ways that smugglers can evade detection, especially when well disguised.
Both persons have been bailed out to appear in court on April 27 2020.
The arrests come after an Algeciras police chief claimed he had not seen any tobacco or drugs smuggling arrests in the Gibraltar press.
