\n<\/p>\n
Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officers literally brought out their axes and crowbars as they hacked and pried open parts of a Malaysia-registered bus during an enhanced check at Woodlands Checkpoint on May 15.<\/p>\n
In a video posted on its social media on Tuesday (May 26), ICA officers are seen hacking away at the buses’ floorboard to reveal what appears to be modified compartments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Crowbars and hammers were also used to pry open parts of the bus chassis to reveal contraband cigarettes.<\/p>\n
ICA said the bus was directed for enhanced checks after its image analysts found anomalies in the scanned image of the bus.<\/p>\n
There, its search and examination officers extracted more than 3,200 cartons and 40 packets of duty-unpaid cigarettes.<\/p>\n
AsiaOne understands that such profiling is typically conducted by ICA’s Integrated Targeting Centre (ITC).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ITC operates 24\/7 and leverages data analytics to conduct pre-arrival risk assessment of travellers, conveyances and cargo. Those assessed to be of higher risk are flagged for checks upon arrival at Singapore’s checkpoints.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In this case, a 42-year-old Malaysian driver was arrested and the case referred to the Singapore Customs for further investigation.<\/p>\n
Buying, selling, conveying, possessing or dealing with duty-unpaid goods are serious offences under the Customs Act and the Goods and Services Tax Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Offenders can be fined up to 40 times the amount of duty evaded, jailed for up to six years, or both.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vehicles used in these offences and proceeds of sales of duty-unpaid goods may also be forfeited.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[[nid:736735]]<\/p>\n
editor@asiaone.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officers literally brought out their axes and crowbars as they hacked and pried open parts of a Malaysia-registered bus during…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a>
\n