Kuala Lumpur, April 19:

Malaysian authorities said on Wednesday they have seized 1.5 million pirated DVDs and compact discs worth 51.3 million ringgit ($14 million) in raids so far this year, nearly half of them bound for other nations.

Some 712,304 DVDs and CDs - mainly newly released movies and video games - were seized from international airports in Kuala Lumpur, the southern state of Johor, and Sarawak and Sabah states on Borneo Island, the official Bernama news agency reported.

The discs were to be exported as far as countries in South America and Africa, Bernama said.

Malaysia is one of 36 countries on a US watch list of serious copyright violators, and the US-based industry group, Business Software Alliance, estimates that most of the software used in Malaysia is illegal.

Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs ministry’s officers carried out 6,341 raids in the first quarter of this year, Bernama said, citing the ministry’s enforcement division Deputy Director Iskandar Halim Sulaiman.

Iskandar said the latest attempt to smuggle illegally copied discs out of the Kuala Lumpur airport was foiled Tuesday night when police intercepted seven boxes containing around 8,000 discs labeled as computer parts destined for Johannesburg, South Africa.

“What’s more shocking is the fact that the DVDs were movies that have just been released to the cinemas,” Bernama quoted Iskandar as saying.

The discs were estimated to be worth about 80,000 ringgit ($22,000). He said the discs were being analyzed to determine their origin but the senders were not traceable from the address on the boxes.

Two previous raids at the same airport prevented attempts to export 7,000 movie discs to Cambodia and 36,000 video game discs to Montevideo, Uruguay. Officials conducted 38,069 raids last year, seizing 4.8 million pirated discs worth 100.4 million ringgit ($27.4 million)

and seizing nine disc copying machines.

In comparison, 18 machines worth 43.5 million ringgit ($12 million) have been taken in until April this year. Malaysian officials say they are attempting to curb the distribution of pirated discs, which cost about 10 ringgit ($2.70) at outlets in Malaysia’s largest city, Kuala Lumpur.