Mighty says it has nothing to do with 500,000 packs of cigarettes seized by BIR

Mighty Corporation on Sunday denied any involvement in the production of half a million packs of cigarettes with fake tax stamps seized by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) last week.

"Mighty Corporation has no equipment or facility to produce cigarettes, much less print fake excise tax stamps to affix to them," the company's legal counsel Sigfrid Fortun said in a text message.

The BIR seized over half a million packs of cigarettes last week—300,000 in Quezon City, and 250,000 in Caloocan—with fake BIR stamps, or without any stamp at all.

Revenue Officer Sonny Advincula, head of the BIR Strike Team, said that some of the cigarette packs bore labels of a manufacturer that was not registered with the BIR.

"Supposedly, Mighty ito. Pero ginawa nilang 'Belmont'," he said.

Fortune called this statement "libelous."

"The company has no import permits to produce cigarette components, and the BIR Officer who implicated it in this raid will only have himself to blame for a libelous accusation made without first verifying the factual basis for his statements," he said.

It may be recalled that Mighty Corp.—then the number two cigarette firm in the Philippines—was acquired by Japan Tobacco Inc. in 2017 for nearly $1 billion.

The transaction was completed in September 2017, months after the BIR filed a P9.56-billion tax evasion case against Mighty for the supposed use of bogus tax stamps.

The proceeds from the transaction were used to finance the company's P25-billion settlement offer with the government.

"Agreements concluded in 2017 with no less than SOF Dominguez and SOJ Aguirre resulting in the dismissal of the tax fraud cases confirmed its commitment to stop all tobacco-related businesses that led to the filing of the cases," said Fortun. — BM, GMA News