CAIRO: Customs officials at Cairo International Airport have thwarted an attempt by an Egyptian passenger to smuggle five gold bars into the country.

An official at the arrivals hall stopped the passenger and had him searched as he was acting suspiciously, and because he had only planned to stay for two days in the country. An initial search of his bags revealed no banned or restricted goods. He had arrived on a Jazeera Airways flight.

When a further search was carried out, five gold bars were found hidden in his clothing. A seizure report No. 164 of 2022 was filed by the director general of customs to seize the items and launch legal action against the citizen.

Meanwhile, in two separate incidents, customs officials at the airport had also prevented attempts to smuggle cosmetics and mobile phones into the country by passengers who had arrived from Italy and the UAE.

In the first case, a customs officer spotted in the x-ray scanner goods that looked suspicious in the bags of a male passenger arriving from Bergamo Airport on an Air Arabia flight. A total of 255 packages of various cosmetics were found.

In the second case, a woman arriving from Sharjah was found with 35 phones, manufactured by a well-known US company, under her clothes.

Legal action has been taken against both passengers.