KOTA KINABALU: Enforcement personnel from the Home Ministry’s Department of Film Censorship Control and Enforcement (Sabah) (HMDFCCE) discovered a secret storeroom built inside a shop selling CDs and DVDs yesterday afternoon.
The shop, located at a well-known shopping complex at the heart of the city centre, was raided by enforcement personnel who also found more than 500 copies of X-rated DVDs all stacked neatly inside the storeroom.
Two other CD and DVD outlets at the same shopping complex were also raided and about 60,500 copies of CDs and DVDs valued at about RM612,500 were seized.
HMDFCCE Sabah director Ahmad Hilmi Said said the raid was made after the department received information that the one of the shops had been selling pornographic DVDs.
“Based on the information, our personnel went to the said shop to investigate and found a secret storeroom has been built inside that premises, just behind the casher counter.
“From the outside, it looks like a wall but it has a secret door which can only be open with a remote control.
“Our team have to force their way inside the storeroom by breaking the door after the premises caretaker refused and denied that there is a secret storeroom built inside the premises,” he told reporters at a press conference at their headquarters here yesterday.
Ahmad Hilmi said his team then found about 500 copies of pornographic DVDs and several DVDs without the B license inside the storeroom.
During the raid, enforcement personnel were also tipped off that two more outlets were also selling uncensored DVDs.
“We then raided all the three outlets and confiscated about 60,000 DVDs without the B license and about 500 pornographic DVDs,” he said, adding that initial investigation believed all the seized items were valued at RM612,500.
Ahmad Hilmi added three people, believed to be the caretakers of the outlets, were arrested to assist investigation.
He also said that yesterday’s raid was the second biggest this year after the department confiscated more than RM1.4 million of DVDs without the B license in Papar early this year.
The case would be investigated under Section 5(2) of the Film Censorship Act 2002 for possession of obscene films and Section 18(4) (a) of the same act for possessing film without the B license.