In Lithuania’s Varėna, Šalčininkai and Ignalina districts, law enforcement officers intercepted shipments containing a total of 13,500 packs of Belarusian cigarettes.
As ELTA reported, the official representative of the State Border Guard Service (VSAT), Giedrius Mišutis, said that two objects were discovered directly by border guards, while a third — in Varėna District — was found by police officers on the basis of operational information from VSAT criminal intelligence.
All intercepted packages were equipped with GPS trackers to allow the organisers of the illegal traffic to monitor their location.
According to VSAT, since the beginning of this year, 136,000 packs of cigarettes delivered from Belarus by air have already been received at the agency’s warehouses. While 32 weather balloons were intercepted in January, 19 such incidents were recorded in February. Individuals involved in receiving the shipments on the ground are also being detained — 22 suspects have been taken into custody this year, compared with a total of 171 detainees over the whole of last year.