Police have discovered 126,000 packs of cigarettes without excise stamps (UKM) worth more than 50 million tenge at a warehouse in Kostanay.
According to Polisia.kz, a local businesswoman bought these cigarettes in September at a price below market value, planning to sell them later.
"At present, police are conducting further operations to identify the supply channel and all those involved in the illegal activity", the statement said.
The collected materials and seized tobacco products have been handed over to the Kostanay State Revenue Department.
It will be recalled that in May it was reported that due to cigarette smuggling last year, the state budget of Kazakhstan lost approximately 33 billion tenge.
In September this year, border guards prevented attempts to illegally import cigarettes at the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan border. The tobacco products were found in a refrigerator truck which, according to accompanying documents, should have contained Bulgarian peppers. During the inspection, more than 180,000 packs of undeclared cigarettes of the brands "Oris", "Parlament" and "Zumerret" were seized.
Shortly before this, a consignment of smuggled cigarettes brought in from Turkmenistan bypassing the customs control zone was uncovered by officers of the Agency for Financial Monitoring (AFM) in the Mangystau Region. The customs value of the confiscated 6.5 million packs of cigarettes amounted to nearly 1.5 billion tenge.
In October, in the Aktobe Region, officials prevented the illegal export of a large batch of cigarettes from Kazakhstan through the "Zhaisan" road checkpoint. On that occasion, more than 71,000 packs were attempted to be taken out without accompanying documents, hidden under crates of vegetables.