Customs and the FIOD, the investigation service of the tax authorities, yesterday raided fifteen business premises in an investigation into illegal cigarette factories. In Schaijk and Heerlen production lines were dismantled that could make two million cigarettes a day.
21 men from Poland and Ukraine have been arrested in the premises. Aggregates, dozens of pallets of packaging material, 800 kilos of hookah tobacco, 40,000 kilos of tobacco and 5.4 million illegally rolled cigarettes have been seized. All items have now been transported and destroyed in fifteen trailers.
The FIOD estimates that the State would have lost about 8.5 million euros in excise duty if the cigarettes and tobacco had ended up on the Dutch market. Evasion of excise and sales tax is a crime.
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