Customs officers found more than 8.6m cigarettes without Bulgarian excise stamps in a second truck stopped at the Kulata border crossing, the Customs Agency said. Two Polish nationals have been charged, and a court kept both in custody.
This follows our earlier report on nearly 25m cigarettes seized in four trucks at Lesovo and Kulata.
The Polish-registered truck and trailer was stopped on 8 October 2026 as it entered Bulgaria from Greece. During the check, officers found cigarettes of three brands behind a row of boxes holding bags of cornflakes and packs of kadaif. Once unloaded, they filled 24 pallets.
In all, 8,640,000 cigarettes were seized, equal to 432,000 packs. The agency says the goods are worth €1,644,840.
The district prosecutor's office in Blagoevgrad, Petrich branch, asked for both defendants to be held in custody. The pre-trial case concerns an offence under Article 234, paragraph 3, point 3, in conjunction with paragraph 1, second alternative, and Article 20, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code. The court's rulings can be appealed to the Blagoevgrad regional court.
The case was announced on Friday at a briefing on the results of Operation Prometheus against the illegal trade in tobacco products. Customs Agency deputy director Stefan Bakalov and Elitsa Kalpachka, head of the Blagoevgrad district prosecutor's office, spoke there about three cigarette seizures, including another truck at Kulata.
The agency has posted a video of the seized cigarettes on its YouTube channel.