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Home / Mass-Media / Events / NAC-Customs-POCOCSC joint operation: a former and a current customs officer detained in a cigarette smuggling case
NAC-Customs-POCOCSC joint operation: a former and a current customs officer detained in a cigarette smuggling case
21.06.2022 1069 ViewsOfficers from the Anti-Fraud and Compliance Department of the Customs Service and the National Anticorruption Center (NAC), under the leadership of the Prosecutor's Office for Combating Organized Crime and Special Cases (POCOCSC), executed search warrants in Chisinau and abroad on cigarette smuggling.
The law enforcement officers established that a group of people had implemented a criminal scheme specialized in cigarette smuggling, expressed by taking them out of the country, by places set up for customs control, but by hiding them from the Moldovan authorities. The smuggling was detained by the Romanian authorities, who stated that the almost 40,000 packs of cigarettes were from Moldova and were found in a bus traveling to Italy.
The case was documented by the Romanian Border Police in April, when the cigarettes were seized, after it was established that it belonged to the bus driver - a man with dual Moldovan and Romanian citizenship - as well as the spare driver, who intended to sell it on the black market in Italy.
Following the searches conducted by the Anti-Fraud and Compliance Department of the Customs Service and the POCOCSC, the two drivers, as well as a former and a current customs officer, were detained for 72 hours. Prosecutors are due to examine the need to ask the court to apply pre-trial detention to the suspects.
According to the law, the presumption of innocence prevails at this stage of the investigation.
The criminal investigation is active, for establishing all the aspects of the crime.
Details about the smuggling case are available in the press release of the Romanian Border Police from April 28, 2022: https://www.politiadefrontiera.ro/ro/iasi/i-captura-impresionanta-de-tigari-de-contrabanda-in -ptf-albita-28904.html
Press release of the Customs Service