Customs officers seized nearly 25m smuggled cigarettes in four lorries at the Lesovo and Kulata border crossings in 24 hours, the Customs Agency said at a briefing today. The haul is worth about €5m.
This report follows our earlier story about a Polish lorry carrying nearly 9m cigarettes without tax stamps, which was stopped at Kulata on Tuesday, 6 October.
The seizures are part of Operation Prometheus, which targets the smuggling of excise goods through Bulgaria's border crossings, including goods in transit to other European countries. Several units of the agency took part, among them the customs intelligence and investigation directorate, the anti-drug-trafficking directorate and the X-ray systems directorate. Using analysis and intelligence data, officers had drawn up profiles of high-risk lorries. Deputy director of the agency Stefan Bakalov said the amounts are unprecedented in Bulgaria for an operation of this length.
At Lesovo, officers found 6,028,000 cigarettes, or 301,400 packs, worth more than €1.2m. This is a record for the crossing. Both lorries had Turkish plates and Turkish drivers, and both were carrying mixed cargo from Turkey to Romania. According to its papers, the first lorry carried plastic boxes for electrical panels, plus aluminium and technical goods. The X-ray showed areas of suspicious density. A physical search then turned up 2,850,000 cigarettes (142,500 packs) of various brands inside the pallets with the panels. The second lorry carried bathroom accessories. The cigarettes were hidden in the same way, in pallets of sink traps: 3,178,000 cigarettes (158,900 packs).
The two pre-trial proceedings over Lesovo are registered with the Burgas Customs Directorate. A customs investigator leads them under the supervision of the Yambol District Prosecutor's Office.
The Polish lorry at Kulata was coming from Greece. According to its papers, it carried vertical enamel stoves. Each carton with a picture of a stove held a metal box of cigarettes. In all, the lorry held 8,999,160 cigarettes, or 449,958 packs, with an estimated value of €1,789,852.80. The cigarettes are of three brands. Some have no tax stamps, and some carry a "Duty Free" label. The driver, a Polish citizen, has no previous convictions. He is charged with holding large amounts of excise goods without the tax stamps the law requires. He was held for up to 72 hours and then remanded in custody.
The second case at Kulata also involves a large amount of cigarettes, but prosecutors are giving no details so as not to hamper the investigation. All possible versions are being checked, said Elitsa Kalpachka, head of the Blagoevgrad District Prosecutor's Office. The four pre-trial proceedings are under the supervision of the prosecutors' offices in Yambol and Blagoevgrad.
Kalpachka said the methods in all four cases resemble those of drug-trafficking groups. She explained that more than one lorry crosses the border, and when the first is stopped, the next one drives on and secures at least part of the profit. This approach is new to investigators in cigarette smuggling, she added.