EU – Baltic States, Legislation, Lithuania, Markets and Companies, Transport

Photo: cust.lt

On performing on the Lithuanian-Polish border the strengthened control of carried cargoes, the officers of the Lithuanian Customs mobile group stopped for inspection a Scania cargo truck arriving from Spain.  

The driver of the car, Vilnius resident, got very nervous when he saw the officers. Thus, although he tried to convince that he was merely carrying to Lithuania the mixed consignment of different goods (cosmetics, coffee, medicine), the customs officers decided to check the truck in detail at the closest Kybartai border control point. 

Having performed by an x-ray control system the check of the car and the detail examination of the truck cabin, the reason of the driver’s anxiety started to become clear: the officers found there six packages with, as suspected, 13 kg of marijuana. Yet more drugs were hidden in two plastic boxes, loaded with mildewed oranges and lemons – about 60 kg of, as suspected, hashish packages were found there. The total value of drugs on the black market is about 870 thousand euro. 

A pre-trial investigation of the drug smuggling has been started at the Kaunas branch of the Customs Criminal Service (CCS). The prosecutors of the Kaunas region are in charge of the investigation.

The driver was detained. Later, he was arrested for 20 days pursuant to the decision of the Kaunas City District Court. By the way, it turned out that he has already had in the past problems with law enforcement officers due to drugs, i.e. amphetamine smuggling.

Soon, the customs criminalists detained the suspected organizer of this crime. He was arrested for three months pursuant to a court decision. 

This year, the customs criminologists have already detained about 700 kg of different drugs (hashish, amphetamine, new psychoactive substances). In April, the customs officers detained on the Lithuanian-Polish border one of the biggest (about 300 kg) consignments of hashish (its value on the black market is about 3.5 million euro), also brought to Lithuania from Spain. A similar-sized consignment was detained by the officers at the end of May on the Lithuanian-Latvian border. Last year, the Lithuanian Customs officers seized 1.131 tons of different types of drugs. 

According to the officials` knowledge, Lithuania has become in recent years a transit point for shipment of hashish and marijuana, originating in Africa, to Russia. These drugs are often brought illegally from Morocco to Spain through the Strait of Gibraltar.