Cigarette smuggler is jailed for two years
A FUGITIVE who helped smuggle more than 12 million cigarettes into the North East has been caught and jailed for two years.
Haroldas Bernotas was part of an organised gang who smuggled cigarettes, worth £3.6 million in duty and VAT into the region between 2013 and 2015.
The 25-year-old, from Radviliskis, Lithuania, fled the UK but was convicted after a trial at Durham Crown Court in May 2018 and sentenced to two years in jail in his absence.
Investigators from HMRC tracked Bernotas to Lithuania, where he was arrested on June 6 this year, and on July 10 he appeared at
Durham Crown Court, where his two-year jail sentence was confirmed.
Bernotas was initially arrested by Revenue and Customs officers in April 2015 after he and his fellow gang members were caught unloading a shipment at an industrial unit in Stanley, Durham.
The illegal goods were smuggled into the country concealed inside wooden cable drum discs.
Two other men have already been jailed over the – Egidijus Kairys, of Forest Lane, London, received a three-year prison sentence in May 2018, while Kristupas Strasunskas, of Klaipeda, Lithuania, was sentenced to 18 months.