ILOILO City – The Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) has escalated its anti-smuggling campaign from market-level crackdowns to a full-scale hunt for regional cigarette suppliers after authorities uncovered a warehouse in Iloilo province containing P5.22 million worth of illicit cigarettes — one of the biggest anti-smuggling seizures in Western Visayas this year.
The major operation, carried out on April 23 in Barangay Jolog, Estancia, Iloilo, exposed what police believe is part of a wider illegal distribution network feeding smuggled cigarettes into markets across the region.
The warehouse was reportedly linked to a suspect identified only as alias “Leslie.”
PRO-6 director Brigadier General Josefino Ligan said the breakthrough stemmed from the police’s intensified “market denial strategy,” which targets retailers first before tracing the origin of the contraband products.
“In the previous months, we have been enforcing this market denial strategy. Nag-i-inspect tayo sa mga palengke. Kapag may nagtitinda ng smuggled cigarettes, pinapa-surrender natin ang mga produkto,” Ligan said.
The strategy involves regular inspections in public markets and commercial establishments throughout Western Visayas, where vendors caught selling smuggled cigarettes are compelled to surrender their stocks.
According to Ligan, the repeated surrender of illegal cigarettes over the past months convinced authorities that larger suppliers were still actively operating behind the scenes.
“Sa dami ng nagsu-surrender over the past months, malinaw na may distributor o supplier sa likod nito. That is where we are now focusing our police efforts,” he said.
Ligan said the campaign has now evolved into a direct assault against warehouses and distribution hubs supplying illegal products across the region.
“In fact, two weeks ago, Iloilo Province was able to uncover a warehouse containing more or less five million pesos worth of smuggled cigarettes,” he said.
He described the Estancia warehouse raid as a major breakthrough in dismantling the illegal supply chain.
“This is exactly what our market denial strategy is meant to do — deny them access to the market until we expose the entire distribution chain,” Ligan said.
The police chief said PRO-6 is now intensifying surveillance against personalities suspected of financing and distributing illicit cigarettes in Western Visayas.
“Itututok na natin ang police operations sa lahat ng distributors. We will monitor the persons involved and ensure that this illegal supply network is dismantled,” he said.
Ligan acknowledged that the region’s inter-island transport routes continue to make Western Visayas vulnerable to cigarette smuggling operations. Still, he maintained that the intensified enforcement campaign is already disrupting illegal trade activities.
“When we deny them the market, eventually the suppliers are forced to expose themselves. That is what happened in Iloilo Province,” he said.
He warned smugglers that PRO-6 will continue pursuing both retailers and suppliers as part of efforts to protect legitimate businesses, enforce tax laws, and curb the proliferation of illicit cigarettes in the region./PN
