Saudi customs authorities recorded 1,173 contraband seizures across land, sea and air ports during the latest reported week, according to figures attributed to the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA).
Saudi Gazette reported the weekly tally on September 19, saying the seizures covered a wide range of prohibited goods detected at entry points across the Kingdom. The report described the figures as part of ZATCA’s continuing customs-control work aimed at protecting society and strengthening oversight of imports and exports.
The published breakdown said the seized items included 70 types of narcotics, naming hashish, cocaine, heroin, crystal methamphetamine and Captagon pills among the substances detected. It also referred to 216 other prohibited materials. The wording of the source does not provide a full item-by-item methodology for those two figures, so Gulf Pulse is retaining the source’s description rather than attempting to reinterpret the categories.
The report separately said customs officers foiled attempts to smuggle 888 shipments of tobacco and tobacco derivatives. It also listed 13 shipments involving counterfeit currency and one shipment of weapons and related equipment.
Those category figures should not be treated as a simple arithmetic breakdown of the 1,173 total because the source describes some figures as types or shipments rather than presenting a single harmonized category table. The headline figure — 1,173 seizures — is the clearest aggregate number attributed to the authority.
ZATCA said, through the report, that the enforcement activity forms part of its efforts to maintain customs control over goods entering and leaving Saudi Arabia. The authority linked that work to security and public protection and said it coordinates with relevant partners in combating smuggling and the movement of prohibited goods.
The authority also renewed its call for the public to report suspected smuggling activity. Saudi Gazette said ZATCA accepts security reports through the number 1910, an international contact number and a dedicated email channel. It added that reports are handled confidentially and that a financial reward can be available when information provided by a whistleblower is verified as correct.
For readers, the most important limitation is that the available public report is a short official-statistics account rather than a detailed enforcement bulletin. Gulf Pulse did not find a separately indexed ZATCA release containing a fuller case-by-case breakdown during this verification cycle. For that reason, the article attributes the figures directly to ZATCA as reported by Saudi Gazette and does not add claims about individual cases, suspects, locations or criminal proceedings that were not present in the source.
The weekly figures nevertheless illustrate the breadth of customs enforcement activity across different types of ports. The reported seizures span narcotics, tobacco products, counterfeit currency, weapons-related material and other prohibited goods, showing that customs inspections are addressing several categories of illicit trade at the same time.
No information in the source indicates that the 1,173 seizures all involved separate people or separate criminal cases, and the report does not provide a regional breakdown. Any later legal action, prosecution or disposal of seized goods would require separate confirmation from the relevant authorities.
The figures were current as of the Saudi Gazette report published on September 19. As with other rolling enforcement statistics, later ZATCA updates could revise the context or provide additional detail, but the 1,173 total is the figure publicly reported for the week covered by this announcement.
