The District Court in Siedlce will hear a major cigarette smuggling case involving 33 defendants and nearly 30 million packs of cigarettes. The indictment has been submitted to the court by the Podlasie branch of the Department for Combating Organised Crime and Corruption of the National Prosecutor’s Office in Białystok.
The charges concern participation in an organised criminal group committing tax crimes and offences related to providing financial benefits to customs officers.
The National Prosecutor’s Office said that the customs officers implicated in the case are not included in the current indictment.
According to the case materials, the group operated from November 2018 to October 2021. Cigarettes were smuggled from Belarus into Poland via the Bobrowniki road border crossing and the Terespol railway crossing.
In total, the smugglers transported 29.44 million packs of cigarettes. The damage to the Polish budget is estimated at nearly 498 million zlotys, or more than 140 million US dollars at the current exchange rate.
It is reported that to ensure the transportation of the cigarettes, members of the group paid bribes to customs officers amounting to at least 99,500 zlotys and 898,400 euros.
Assets worth 10.9 million zlotys have been seized in the case.