A MAN posing as a Polish diplomat attempted to smuggle nearly 600 cartons of cigarettes with Ukrainian control stamps from Ukraine to Slovakia. The attempted tax evasion could have exceeded €16,200, the SITA newswire reported on April 28.
Driving a diplomatic vehicle, the man was detained when trying to pass through customs at the Vyšné Nemecké border crossing in eastern Slovakia. The customs officers who detained him said that he was behaving unusually.
The car had a Polish registration plates and was marked as a diplomatic vehicle, but the man did not have a diplomatic passport. He told the customs officers he was transporting diplomatic mail, but they revealed during the inspection that the packages lacked the signs or markings typically found on such mail. After a more detailed inspection the customs officers discovered about 119,940 cigarettes of various brands with Ukrainian stamps. The man was detained, SITA reported.
An investigator from the criminal department of the Financial Administration later charged the man with violating the rules on state technical measures pertaining to marking goods. The investigator also plans to submit the file for investigation and has proposed keeping the man in custody, SITA reported.
