Slovak customs officers have seized around 400,000 cigarettes with Ukrainian duty stamps and detained three persons with Ukrainian passports near the village of Klčov in Levoča district in eastern Slovakia.
Customs officials said they believed the illegally imported cigarettes were probably en route to the Czech Republic. Martina Kereková from the Customs Directorate of the Slovak Republic told the SITA newswire that the Ukrainians involved would have profited by approximately €50,000 in unpaid customs duty and taxes if their actions had been successful.
The customs officers discovered the goods as they tried to pull over three vehicles. The drivers of the vehicles ignored customs officers’ instructions to stop and attempted to flee. As a result, special units of the customs administration were deployed. The vehicles were later stopped at a roadblock. Nobody was injured during the intervention. The vehicles, which were actually registered in the Czech Republic, were bearing forged Slovak licence plates.
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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