Car Crash Exposes One Million Cigarettes Without Tax Stamps

A Lithuanian man has been arrested for trying to smuggle more than one million cigarettes into Poland after a road accident exposed the contraband concealed in his van.

Police officers were called to the scene of a collision on a main route linking northeastern Poland with Lithuania.

There, they found thousands of cigarette packs that had spilled from the damaged van, which had just crossed the border.

‘Besides parts of the damaged vehicles, thousands of cigarette packs without Polish excise tax stamps were strewn on the road,’ Polish police said in a press release.

According to preliminary estimates, the smuggling attempt could have deprived the Polish state budget of over PLN 1.5 million ($413,000) in unpaid excise duty.

The Lithuanian driver was charged with tax evasion and transporting tobacco products without excise stamps. He faces a possible prison sentence if convicted.