Excise Dept. seizes stocks of liquor with forged revenue licences from North, North Central and Eastern Provinces

Excise officials have seized a large number of bottles of liquor with forged revenue stickers, during raids conducted in the North, North Central and the Eastern Provinces on Saturday (09).

The raids were conducted by Assistant Excise Commissioners Roshan Perera, Tissa Kumara Rajapakshe, Jayantha de Silva and Sumith Chandrakumara.

The bottles of liquor with forged stickers were found in liquor shops in Jaffna, Trincomalee, Mannar and Valachchenai.

The stock of liquor was taken into custody and kept at the Regional Excise Offices and samples were sent to the Excise Department Headquarters at Rajagiriya for further investigations.

Commissioner General of Excise, M.J. Gunasiri, said that there had been several raids in the Northern and Eastern provinces during Saturday and Sunday and he had called for a report on them.

Gunasiri said that Excise raids had been increased in view of the festive season because the illicit liquor producers usually make use of the season to release their stocks with forged stickers.

Raids would continue till the end of April, and the Department officials had been instructed to carry out raids throughout the country in search of bottles of liquor being sold with counterfeit revenue stickers, which deprived the state of much-needed revenue.

There had been large number of raids following the allegations on counterfeit revenue stickers on bottles of liquor and the CID was conducting a separate investigation after being prompted by State Minister of Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya.

The matter had been raised by several parliamentary committees, especially those headed by Dr. Harsha de Silva and Champika Ranawaka.

Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe told Parliament recently that the government coffers lost around 60 billion rupees a year due to counterfeit stickers and other, etc.