A Polish lorry driver will stay in custody over nearly €1.8m worth of cigarettes seized at the Kulata border crossing, the Appellate Prosecutor's Office in Sofia said. Prosecutors and the Customs Agency gave details at a joint briefing.

This follows our earlier report on record hauls of cigarettes seized at Kulata and Lesovo. The Customs Agency said then that over several days its officers had stopped illegal cigarettes at both crossings.

The Petrich branch of the Blagoevgrad District Prosecutor's Office asked the court to hold the driver in custody, and the court agreed. He is charged under Article 234, paragraph 3, point 3, read with paragraph 1, of the Criminal Code.

The Polish-registered lorry entered Bulgaria from Greece on 6 October. Customs officers chose it for a check after a risk analysis. Its papers said it carried enamel stoves for EU countries.

An X-ray scan raised doubts about the load, and the lorry was taken for a physical search at the Kulata customs office. Officers found metal tins of cigarettes in all the boxes marked as stoves.

In all, there were 8,999,160 cigarettes in 449,958 packs of three brands. Some packs had no Bulgarian excise stamp, and others were marked "Duty Free". Prosecutors value the load at €1,789,852.80.

At an earlier briefing, Stefan Bakalov, deputy director of the Customs Agency, said an operation called Prometheus had netted nearly 25 million cigarettes in four lorries in one day, two each at Lesovo and Kulata. He put their rough value at about €5m.