Officials of the Customs Administration of the State Revenue Service (SRS) prevented the smuggling of 180,000 cigarettes (9,000 packs of cigarettes) while controlling cargo trains on the border between Latvia and Belarus. The cigarettes were hidden in cargoes of imported goods and in an empty hopper wagon.
Yesterday, on July 27, 2022, the customs officer of the Indra Customs Control Point (MKP), while conducting a physical control of the composition of a train arriving from Belarus, discovered that smaller bags of cigarettes were hidden in the wagon among the bags containing the cargo of imported goods. Continuing the control together with the officials of the State Border Guard, 80,000 cigarettes (4,000 packs of cigarettes) “NZ”, “Queen” and “Premier” with excise stamps of the Republic of Belarus were seized.
On July 26, 2022, at Indra MKP, while analyzing the scan images of the train composition, the customs official suspected the movement of undeclared goods in a hopper-type wagon without cargo. During the physical control, the customs officials found that there were packs of cigarettes in the wagon under a cardboard cover. 40,000 cigarettes (2,000 packs) “NZ” and “Queen” with excise stamps of the Republic of Belarus were hidden in the wagon.
On the other hand, on July 22, 2022, while carrying out control measures using video surveillance cameras, customs officials suspected the importation of undeclared goods in several wagons with loads of ore. As a result of the control, 60,000 cigarettes (3,000 packs) “NZ” and “Queen” with excise stamps of the Republic of Belarus were seized.
When signs of a criminal offense were detected during customs control, the case materials were handed over to the Tax and Customs Police Department of the SRS for decision-making on the initiation of criminal proceedings.
By carrying out customs control measures, in the first half of 2022, the SRS Customs Administration has prevented the importation of 9.83 million contraband cigarettes into Latvia. The amount of taxes unpaid to the state for such a quantity of cigarettes exceeds 1.7 million euros. SRS website in the section “Customs/Useful/Smuggled cigarettes. “Statistics” is an opportunity to track online the amount of detected smuggling in the area.
