Authorities in Greece have seized seven million cigarettes destined to be smuggled into the EU and the United Kingdom, reports AFP.
Officials at the Central Port Authority of Igoumenitsa in western Greece stopped a 64-year-old man driving a refrigerator truck found to contain 7,198,200 cigarettes hidden in more than 5,000 containers of yoghurt, according to AFP. The man from an unnamed foreign country was consequently arrested on charges of smuggling. The authorities said that the custom duties and taxes on the seized cigarettes amounted to over EUR 1.5 million.
“The confiscated quantity of smuggled cigarettes was to be distributed on the illegal markets of the European Union and the United Kingdom”, the ministry statement added, citing the analysis so far.