Border guards halt €1.4 million illegal cigarette shipment in Klaipėda

LRT reported that border guards in Klaipėda, a port city, seized an illegal cigarette shipment worth nearly €1.4 million on Saturday.

Officers from the Coastal Border Guard Unit’s criminal intelligence division and the Port Border Guard Station spotted suspicious activity in northern Klaipėda. Pallets of boxes were being transferred by hand-operated lift from a Poland-registered MAN truck with a semi-trailer to a Scania truck bearing Danish licence plates.

The officers found 448 boxes containing 224,000 packs of cigarettes without excise stamps: 144,000 Winston Slender packs, 48,000 Marlboro packs, 16,000 Marlboro Gold packs and 16,000 Prince Red packs. The shipment’s value, including all taxes payable in Lithuania, was estimated at almost €1.4 million.

Two men were detained during the operation: a 44-year-old resident of Kaunas district and a 48-year-old Belarusian citizen. The Belarusian was legally in Lithuania, held a residence permit in Poland and said he worked there as a driver for a logistics company.

The State Border Guard Service has launched a pre-trial investigation into unlawful possession of excise goods. The investigation is being led by a prosecutor from the Criminal Prosecution Division of the Klaipėda Regional Prosecutor’s Office.

The offence carries a fine or up to eight years in prison. Both men were placed in detention, and on Monday a court ordered pre-trial detention for two months for the Lithuanian man and one month for the Belarusian.