Illegal exports worth tens of millions of tenge have been prevented by the transport prosecutor’s office and customs authorities.
According to the press service of the main transport prosecutor’s office, in the Mangystau region, at the "Morport" customs post, during an inspection of a container from Iran, a large batch of smuggled Oris cigarettes was discovered. The perpetrators attempted to pass them off as rubbish bins, with over 226,000 packs worth 85.9 million tenge.
At the "Altynkol-Zhol" post in the Zhetysu region, an attempt to smuggle 400,000 packs of cigarettes worth 87 million tenge, disguised as light panels, was also thwarted. The cargo was destined for Poland.
In the Turkestan region, the illegal export of 413 tonnes of timber was prevented. It was being transported across the border on 17 lorries. Those responsible were held administratively liable.
For context, it was previously reported that due to cigarette smuggling last year, the state budget of Kazakhstan lost approximately 33 billion tenge.
In September of this year, border guards thwarted attempts to illegally import cigarettes on the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border. The tobacco products were found in a refrigerated truck where, according to accompanying documents, Bulgarian peppers were supposed to be. During the inspection, over 180,000 packs of undeclared cigarettes of the brands "Oris", "Parliament", and "Zumerret" were seized.
Shortly before this, a batch of smuggled cigarettes brought in from Turkmenistan bypassing the customs control zone was discovered 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, the illegal export of a large consignment of cigarettes from Kazakhstan was thwarted at the "Zhaisan" road checkpoint. At that time, over 71,000 packs were being taken out without accompanying documents, hidden under crates of vegetables.
In August of last year, a large batch of cigarettes with counterfeit excise stamps (UCMs) totalling over 1.6 million packs was seized in Uralsk. It was valued at 967.5 million tenge.
At the same time, it emerged that the AFM department for the Zhambyl region was investigating a criminal case concerning an attempt to import two train carriages of tobacco products worth over 1.3 billion tenge from the Kyrgyz Republic without UCMs and accompanying documents.