Police have seized 221 cartons of smuggled cigarettes in Male' on Monday night and detained three foreigners.
In a message to the media, police said the cigarettes were spotted after they were unloaded and a pickup tried to flee.
Police say the cigarettes are believed to have been smuggled. The pickup tried to flee from Bodurasgefaanu Magu.
A carton of cigarettes usually contains 10 packs of cigarettes. This means police seized 2,210 packs of cigarettes.
Cases of cigarette smuggling have increased significantly due to the ban on vaping and the extremely high import duties on cigarettes.
In April, cigarettes worth MVR 21 million were seized from a container imported by the airport development company.
Customs also seized a shipment of cigarettes at the Addu port. The shipment contained more than 100,000 cigarettes.
Before that, senior police officers were caught while running a network to smuggle cigarettes from the airport duty-free zone.
