THREE men, including two customs officials, have been accused of scamming the government out of €1 million in taxes from illegal cigarette trafficking.
The trio was yesterday remanded in custody for eight days.
The suspects include a 55-year-old customs official from Larnaca, a 34-year-old assistant customs official from Meneou and a 55-year-old Dali coffee-shop owner. A fourth person was also arrested but later released after there no evidence was found against him.
The three men, who were remanded in Larnaca, face charges of bribing a civil servant, abuse of power, trafficking duty-free goods, avoiding paying duty and concealing profits. Investigators estimate the state lost over €1 million in owed taxes and duties.
The court was told the case started to unravel on April 4 when a tip-off was received that a shipment arriving from Lebanon, which supposedly contained socks, likely contained drugs.
The shipment was transferred to the customs warehouse where the 55-year-old customs official was posted. During the inspection customs officials determined that the container contained cigarettes, not drugs. The suspect then told another customs official, who was also present in the warehouse, to go to his office to fetch him his cigarettes. When the second man was out of sight, the 55-year-old cleared the container as socks.
Investigators told the court that they had evidence the 55-year-old and 34-year-old customs officials had various financial dealings. The case involves 29 smuggled cargos from Dubai and six from France. There were also instances where cigarette cargos were sent from the occupied areas to Larnaca airport through France.
All shipments were addressed to the assistant custom official’s company and from there sold on the open market. During a search of the latter’s home, police found cartons of duty-free cigarettes. The suspects appear to have reaped huge amounts of money by selling the duty-free goods on the market.
Seventy-seven statements have already been taken and a further 180 are pending. Police are mainly speaking to customs officials at Larnaca Airport.
“It is one of the large and most complicated smuggling cases the Cypriot police have ever investigated,” the investigating officer said.
“We are still looking for a huge amount of evidence, while evidence and documents pertaining to the case are continuing to be amassed,” he added.
The investigator told the court he had that one witness had already been approached to try and influence her statement. He did not rule out the possibility of further arrests and said one more customs official was likely involved.
The remand hearing lasted several hours and the defence lawyers objected to their clients’ remand, which was finally granted for eight-days.
