Polotsk border guards stopped an attempt to smuggle cigarettes

In the evening of December 16, Polotsk border guards, together with officers of the Department for Combating Economic Crimes of the Verkhnedvinsk District Department of Internal Affairs, discovered a raft made of cigarette boxes floating down the Western Dvina River.

The raft consisted of cigarette boxes tied together, wrapped in polyethylene, and two GPS trackers. Thus, smugglers intended to transport a large batch of cigarettes to Latvia using the river current.

After discovery, the raft was towed to the shore.

The cigarettes, in the amount of 38 boxes (about 19,000 packs) and 2 GPS trackers, will be handed over to customs officers. The exact quantity of cigarettes and their estimated value are being determined. An investigation is underway.

As of December 17, this is the fifth case of attempted cigarette smuggling using the river current in 2013. In total, Polotsk border guards have thwarted 117 attempts to move tobacco products across the Belarusian-Latvian and Belarusian-Lithuanian sections of the State Border this year, detaining over 711,000 packs of cigarettes worth more than 3 billion 852 million rubles.

Press Service of the Polotsk Border Detachment