На русском языке:
В Литве опять задержали контрабанду беларусских сигарет – на €300 тысяч
На беларускай мове:
У Літве зноў затрымалі кантрабанду беларускіх цыгарэт — на €300 тысяч
On Sunday afternoon, at the Lavoriskes post, customs officers detained a large smuggling of cigarettes in a batch of furniture that was transported through Lithuania to the Kaliningrad region of Russia – at least the driver said so. At the moment, 80 thousand packs of Minsk cigarettes have been found in caches, the Customs Service of Lithuania has begun a pre-trial investigation. The cost of cigarettes with mandatory taxes is more than 283 thousand euros.
The incident happened on Sunday, October 17 at about 14:00 at the Lavoriskes border post. A Russian citizen was driving a truck with smuggled cigarettes. Customs officers inspected a semi-trailer loaded with bathroom furniture using an X-ray system and found caches. It turned out that about 3 tons of door canvases served as a cover for smuggling cigarettes.
Tobacco smuggling with Belarusian excise taxes is associated with businessman Alexei Oleksin, one of Lukashenko’s friends, who is notorious in Belarus for the ubiquitous Tabakerka. In 2020, Lithuania and Latvia saw a sharp increase in the volume of smuggled cigarettes from Belarus amid rising prices of European excise taxes and a decrease in income due to COVID-19.
