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During the operation, authorities also seized cigarette making machinery and materials, including over 50 tons of cut tobacco and a consignment of nearly 5 million cigarettes, which had already been loaded on a lorry for distribution, writes LETA/ELTA.

OLAF Director-General Giovanni Kessler congratulated the Polish Police and the Customs authorities in Germany and Lithuania for their achievements in this case.

"This was an extensive criminal enterprise," Kessler said. "The criminals could have produced around 120 million cigarettes with the tobacco which has been seized, representing potential losses to the EU taxpayer of 24 million euros (33.4 million US dollars), and there is no doubt that further deliveries of tobacco were planned."

Kessler went on to explain that the factory had been raided shortly after production had started, noting its considerable production capacity. "If it had continued to run," he said, "losses to the EU and Member State budgets would potentially have been six million euros (8.3 million dollars) a week."

An estimated ten billion euro in taxes and duties are lost to the budgets of the EU and Member States each year as a result of cigarette smuggling and counterfeiting.