Lesotho Revenue Authority (LRA) has released a statement confirming the confiscation of 380,000 illicit cigarettes at the Maseru Bridge on Sunday night. Confiscation of the cigarettes forms part of the Authority’s routine checks on compliance of tobacco and tobacco products in Lesotho. This is the biggest single bust on illicit cigarettes in Lesotho in the past five years. The cigarettes were worth just over a million Loti, which is a similar amount in South African rands.
“This is the biggest single bust on illicit cigarettes in Lesotho in the past five years,” the statement said. The statement said the cigarettes were the RG brand, which they say was classed as an illicit cigarette brand as it was sold below the legal M20 (or R20,02) threshold. RG is manufactured by Gold Leaf Tobacco, a company often accused of failing to pay taxes on their products. A report released in September by the Tobacco Institute of Southern Africa (Tisa) found that illicit tobacco companies are responsible for R7 billion per year in tax evasion and that Gold Leaf Tobacco is responsible for producing 75% of these tax-dodging cigarette brands. The report found that RG, selling locally for an average of just more than R10 per packet, is now the second largest brand in SA after Peter Stuyvesant. The Lesotho Revenue Authority said their policy is to destroy cigarettes which are found to be counterfeit. These illicit cigarettes usually compete in the market with cigarettes that have been declared and paid duties upon importation into Lesotho. LRA pleads with all traders and individuals to cease from importing illicit goods into Lesotho.
Yusuf Abramjee, who became vice president of Crime Stoppers International (CSI) at the beginning of November, took to Twitter to congratulate LRA, saying: “It’s great to see [them] clamping down on South African illicit cigarettes.”
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