Twenty-two tones of tobacco with a million counterfeit cigarettes have been seized and twenty people detained in a joint raid by police from the western city of Szczecin and the central city of Lodz.
“Over 60 officers from the Central Investigation Bureau and the Customs Office participated in the raid on the factory which produced illegal cigarettes in Szczecin,” said Krzysztof Hajdas from the police headquarters in Szczecin, north western Poland.
The illegal factory was equipped with professional machines able to produce and pack cigarettes worth about 1.2 million zloty (240,000 euro).
“The officers seized 16 tones of tobacco which is enough to produce about 20 million cigarettes. We estimate that the State Treasury has lost about 7 million zloty (1.7 million euro) as a result of the illegal cigarette production,” said Hajdas.
In the central city of Lodz officers from the Central Investigation Bureau caught illegal cigarette producers red-handed.
“When they entered an old abandoned plant, they saw eleven at a conveyor belt producing cigarettes. Officers seized 6 tones of tobacco and cigarettes which the men managed to produce,” said Hajdas and adds that the plant produced about 700,000 cigarettes a day, which were later smuggled to Western Europe. (mg)
Source: PAP
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