Energy, Estonia, Legislation, Taxation, Transport

Once the forging of the documents is detected, criminal procedure is launched against those persons, spokespeople of the Tax and Customs Board told BNS on December 22nd.

Deputy head of the customs department Ants Kutti said that there has been an increase in cases, where passengers arriving in Estonia from Russia present a notice with signs of forging to the customs officials, with which the person crossing the border is declaring under simplified procedure the amount of fuel in the car at the time of exiting Estonia in order to avoid paying excise duty on the amount on the way back. In one of the cases, the officials suspect the forging of the stamp of the Police and Border Guard Board, while the numerical and written note of the fuel amount has been forged on the notice in the other three cases.

"We want to warn people so that similar violations are not carried out of ignorance," Kutti said. "Customs officials have received relevant training to detect forged documents and they have experience in everyday work, thus we will discover the forgeries sooner or later. The officials of the Tax and Customs Board are also aided by the second level control of the border guard, where top specialists in the identification of documentation forgery and modern technology check the doubts that our officials may have."

"Forging a document is a serious offense and in any case excise duty on fuel will also have to be paid on fuel amounts brought to Estonia illegally," Kutti said.

Irena Antson, senior border official at the border and migration surveillance department of the East prefecture, said that the forging of fuel information notes is done to try to cut back, but in reality they are doing a disservice to themselves. "Forging a document results in a criminal conviction and instead of small savings, the forger will actually face even larger expenses or a real jail sentence," she said.