UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 25, 2019. Ural Customs handed 1,500 kg of cigarettes over to Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state-run consumer rights watchdog) so that these could be destroyed. The cigarettes in question had been smuggled into Russia illegally, Ural Customs’ press service reports.

The alleged offenders purchased 57 packets of cigarettes in Kyrgyzstan and then sent them to Yekaterinburg by plane. It turned out during a customs check at the airport’s cargo terminal that the cigarettes had no Russian excise duty stamps on them, which meant the items had been smuggled into the country illegally. Besides, some of the packets had ‘Duty Free Sale’ written on them (without any rightful claim or authorization), which constitutes yet another offense.

The court ruled the entire amount had to be destroyed and the businesspeople who sent the cigarettes to Russia had to pay a fine. The tobacco items will be destroyed by Rospotrebnadzor officials in the nearest future.

‘We now have a number of reliable mechanisms to prevent smuggling schemes. Over 7,000 kg of cigarettes with missing excise duty stamps, 96,000 kg of smuggled commodities, and more than 167 counterfeit items got confiscated last year alone,’ says Ural Customs’ Deputy Head Mikhail Ponomarev.