In the context of
the controls carried out by the Independent Authority for Public Revenue against
smuggling and trafficking of drugs, weapons, cigarettes and counterfeit
products, the Anti-Smuggling Department of the 1stCustoms of
Thessaloniki, proceeded to the seizure of thirty-six million hundred thousand
(36,100,000) pieces of contraband cigarettes.On 13/04/2022, after a risk
analysis by the Anti-Smuggling Department, a container with declared
merchandise "wooden cutlery" was selected for inspection, for which a
request for rail transport to Bulgaria had been submitted and was located in a
surrounding fiscal warehouse area. Initially, a check was
carried out by the tobacco detector dog "HACKER", which gave an
indication of the existence of tobacco.
Then, a random check was carried out on the remaining cargo, which had
arrived by road in the previous days and remained in the fiscal warehouse.The inspection led to the discovery of the huge
number of contraband cigarettes, involving goods declared as "wooden
cutlery" and "security shoes", which had arrived by road from
Bulgaria, having declared as senders, Greek companies, and as recipients,
businesses in the Czech Republic. The following day, and with the contribution of
SEK, Customs Auditing Services (ELYT) of Attica found
that Greek companies do not actually exist in the declared headquarters.In
total, after the completion of the checks, 36.1 million contraband cigarettes
were found and seized. Their
respective duties and taxes amount to a total of ………………
