THE BIGGEST seizure of illegal cigarettes in Europe so far this year has been made at Dublin Port, with 38 million of them, valued at €14.7 million, found packed into four 40ft containers that had been shipped from Asia.
The find by Revenue’s Customs officers is the third biggest to date in the Republic and comes at a time when the sale of smuggled cigarettes has increased as demand for cheap tobacco has soared during the recession.
The four containers carrying the latest haul had been almost completely filled with cigarettes. Just one row closest to the doors of each container had been stacked high with boxes of wood pellets in a poor effort to disguise the real cargo if the doors were opened and the goods inside were quickly checked.
The cigarettes were the Golden Eagiie brand. Had they been smuggled into the Republic and gone on sale here, the loss to the exchequer would have been €13.1 million. This is calculated on the value of taxes and duties that would arise from the sale of the same quantity of cigarettes in legitimate retail outlets.
The containers had been shipped from Vietnam to Dublin Port via Rotterdam and arrived in Dublin last Saturday.
They had been selected for X-ray at the port following routine profiling. This revealed the goods inside did not have the consistency of “wood briquettes”, as the containers were labelled on the bill of lading.
A further inspection was carried out and when Customs officers satisfied themselves that the containers were in fact filled with smuggled cigarettes, they were closed again and placed under surveillance.
That operation and subsequent investigations led to a number of people being interviewed and also to a search of commercial premises in Co Meath. The haul was registered to an Irish-based company.
Revenue is investigating if that Meath premises were being used by people involved in the smuggling of cigarettes, and Customs officers seized documentation that is now being examined. Revenue commissioner Liam Irwin said the seizure was a significant blow to organised crime. “Tobacco smuggling is organised fraud on a global scale. It brings criminality into our communities and robs millions of euro from the State each year,” he said.
