Sigmalive — Over 33 million illegally sold cigarettes were seized in Greece by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) cooperating with Greek and Cypriot authorities.
OLAF’s operation dealt with European cigarettes, which had legally been sold to Asia and had ended up finding their way back into Europe, this time illegally, they said in a press release, issued on Friday.
This, the anti-fraud office added, “was the largest of five operations in which a total of more than 75 million cigarettes were seized in Greece, Russia, Germany and Spain between December 2015 and January 2016.”
“Smuggled cigarettes cross borders, sometimes continents, and often pass through different ports before finding their way onto the European market,” OLAF pointed out. This, it noted, “was the case for more than 8 million Vietnamese Aroma cigarettes that came from Asia to the Port of Barcelona.”
According to OLAF, the Aegean Sea was the target of two of its biggest operations this season.
“Thanks to the close cooperation with the Greek General Secretariat against corruption (AFCOS Greece), Greek and Cypriot customs, 33 million cigarettes were seized at the end of January,” it said.
An additional seizure of almost 21 million cigarettes, it added, had already taken place at the Port of Piraeus, bringing the total number of seized cigarettes in Greece in the course of these two recent investigations to over 55 million.
