Employees of the Bureau of Economic Security conduct 24 simultaneous searches at the production facilities and warehouses of four cigarette manufacturers. The companies are suspected of illegal production of tobacco products. This was reported by the BES press service, according to UNN.
Details
It is noted that this is the illegal production of cigarettes under Form 2, with the aim of their further sale in Ukraine and the EU.
In particular, during the searches, detectives have already found production lines and more than 1 million packs of cigarettes "Marshal", "URTA", "BRUT", "BL", "Marvel", "Compliment", etc. without excise stamps. About 18 tons of tobacco were also found.
"In addition, it has been preliminarily established that the vast majority of shipments of illegally produced tobacco products were carried out by a well-known delivery service. At one of its branches, a large number of cigarettes without excise tax stamps were found," the statement said.
Optional
Oleksandr Ruvin, Director of Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise, in an exclusive interview with UNN, said that reducing counterfeiting of tobacco products means increasing profits of legal producers and tax revenues to the budget. At the same time, there should be a clear understanding that only indisputable evidence from forensic experts makes it possible to bring counterfeiters to justice.
"It is the expertise that is evidence in court, so this is a joint task for both expert institutions and law enforcement agencies, all government agencies involved. Of course, the processes are very complicated, not all manufacturers are open to cooperation, and there are other difficulties. There are major players in Ukraine - tobacco manufacturers are large companies that are interested in ensuring that both the state and themselves do not suffer losses from counterfeiting. After all, if there are fewer counterfeits, the manufacturer will sell more of its legal products, make more profit, and, accordingly, more taxes will go to the state budget. They are ready to provide all samples, open data, and cooperate in every possible way. However, there are cases where the opposite is true, and it is logical to assume that in those cases there are a lot of risks, we are talking about very large-scale losses for the state, which are measured in huge amounts," Ruvin said.