Warning to smugglers as driver sent to jail

WOULD-BE SMUGGLERS were warned against trying to bring illicit cigarettes into the country after a lorry driver caught at Humber Sea Terminal was jailed.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) yesterday detailed how Przemyslaw Andrzej Schlabs was arrested at the port by UK Border Force officers on January 24.

They had found more than 76,000 Pect and Marlboro Gold cigarettes hidden behind the front seats and in the sleeping area of Schlabs’ lorry.

Schlabs, who had earlier admitted excise fraud, was jailed for 24 weeks when he appeared at Grimsby Crown Court.

An HMRC spokesman said: “Schlabs thought he could earn some quick and easy cash by smuggling illicit cigarettes into the UK, but he was wrong.”

HMRC investigators found the 42-year-old from Poland had travelled into the UK from Hook of Holland. They said he initially shrugged his shoulders when asked if the cigarettes were his, but then said two men in Poland had offered him around £635 to deliver the items.

The 76,800 non-UK duty paid cigarettes were found to be worth £20,848 in unpaid taxes.

In the two years to October 2017, more than 3.5bn cigarettes and almost 600 tonnes of illicit hand-rolling tobacco were seized in the UK and 848 people prosecuted as a result.

It is part of HMRC’s ongoing work to clamp down on the sale of illicit tobacco, which costs the country about £2bn a year.