The truck driver said he had furniture in the cargo, but a customs control at the port of Karlshamn in September revealed that the plastic-wrapped pallets contained 3.2 million smuggled cigarettes.
The truck driver is now being prosecuted for gross unlawful transportation of excise duty goods. If the cigarettes had been sold on the black market, the state would have lost nearly six million kronor in tobacco tax.
"This is an unusually large case. The trend is that both smoking and our cigarette seizures have decreased over a longer period, but this case shows that cigarette smuggling is still large and lucrative," says Erik Friberg, head of the customs criminal unit south, in a press release.
