The country’s State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) said in a statement on Wednesday that the group was producing and selling smoking tobacco and cigarettes without marking them with the country’s excise stamps, “depriving the country’s budget of some 36 million convertible marks (US$20.88 million).”
During the operation codenamed “Delta,” police searched 32 locations, homes and offices, in 16 cities across the country.
Police said they seized “three tobacco cutting machines, eight manual cigarette rollers, 14,215 packs of cigarettes, another 35,720 cigarettes in bulk, 37 cellphones, six digital scales, a significant amount of tobacco leafs and fine cut tobacco, a seal, some money and two automatic rifles with six rounds of ammunition.”
