Lithuanian customs seize truck carrying 396,000 illegal cigarette packs

Lithuanian customs officers seized a truck carrying 396,000 packs of illegal cigarettes near Marijampolė on Monday evening. The cigarettes were concealed as a shipment of industrial boilers, LRT reported.

Customs Criminal Service officers stopped the DAF truck while patrolling the Via Baltica road at about 7 p.m. The driver told them he was transporting industrial boilers to Germany. When officers opened the trailer, they found it full of cigarettes.

The seized load contained 792 boxes of Winston Blue cigarettes bearing Belarusian excise stamps. Their estimated value, including taxes, could exceed 2 million euros.

The Lithuanian driver was detained for two days. The Customs Criminal Service’s Kaunas division has opened a pre-trial investigation into the illegal possession of excise goods, overseen by prosecutors from the Kaunas Regional Prosecutor’s Office.

During searches at the suspect’s home in Vilkaviškis district, officers found alcohol-filtering equipment and 524 litres of illicit alcohol in three- and five-litre plastic containers. They also found empty paper packaging and bags intended for bottling alcohol.

The service suspects the cigarettes may have been made in an illegal factory in Latvia. It said most cigarettes seized in its recent pre-trial investigations have been brought from Latvia, where Belarusian excise stamps are also suspected of being forged.

The seizure was among the service’s largest cigarette hauls this year. It said transporting the 792 boxes by air would require 130 to 260 balloons, with each typically carrying three to six boxes. So far this year, officers have seized about 3 million packs of illegal cigarettes, mostly brought from Latvia, with a total tax-inclusive value of about 15 million euros.