The Bureau of Customs (BOC)-Ninoy Aquino International Airport (BOC-NAIA) seized more than 13,800 ecstasy tablets, many of them misdeclared as coffee beans.
The 13,824 tablets of ecstasy, also known as party drugs, were contained in seven packages addressed to different consignees and had an estimated street value of P23.501 million. The packages were seized at the Central Mail Exchange Center warehouse in Pasay City.
The parcels originated from the Netherlands and Belgium and were misdeclared as coffee such as Caffe Gondoliere Espresso Beans, Caffe Gondoliere Creme Bonen, Gondoliere Coffee (Arabica), Granulaat, Snoepjes, Coffee DE (Espresso), and DE Coffee (Aroma Red) (Mocca), as well as kids’ toys, BOC said in a release.
The suspicious weight of the packages and the recently discovered modus operandi last July 2020 of smuggling illegal drugs from other countries as “coffee beans” prompted BOC-NAIA to put the packages through document profiling, x-ray scanning and inspections.
Upon physical examination, customs examiners found the ecstasy tablets in different colors concealed in toys and in different wrappers of coffee.
Both the field test conducted by the Customs Anti-Illegal Drug Task Force and the chemical laboratory test conducted by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) confirmed that the seized tablets were methylenedioxymethamphetamine or ecstasy.
BOC-NAIA on August 10 turned over to PDEA the seized illegal drugs for further profiling and case build-up. The importers and other personalities involved in the case face possible prosecution for violation of the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 in relation to Section 1401 (Unlawful Importation or Exportation) of the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act.
