On Tuesday, November 19, border guards seized almost 80 000 contraband cigarettes in the Augšdaugava Municipality.
Analysing information about the possible movement of smuggled cigarettes, border guards of the Daugavpils Board of the State Border Guard in cooperation with officials of the State Police of the Latgale Municipality conducted an inspection of a Volkswagen Passat car in Ūdriši Parish. It was established that the car was driven by a non-citizen of Latvia, there was another non-citizen of Latvia on the passenger seat next to him, and in the luggage compartment of the car there were packages of contraband cigarettes "NZ Gold Super Slim" wrapped in black polyethylene film.
After verifying the information available to the officers and interviewing the persons, the border guards together with one offender went to the person's declared place of residence, where, with his voluntary consent, an unoccupied house was inspected. As a result of the inspection, the border guards found several more packages of cigarettes "NZ Gold Super Slim" wrapped in black polyethylene film under the floor in the hallway of the house.
In total, border guards seized 79 400 "NZ Gold Super Slim" cigarettes with Belarusian excise stamps – 25 400 in the luggage compartment of the car and 54 000 under the floor in the hallway of the house.
The persons were handed over to officials of the State Police, who initiated criminal proceedings under Article 221(3) of the Criminal Law.