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Lithuanian Border Guards Pull Smuggled Cigarettes Out of the Nemunas River Again

Officers of the Lithuanian border guard of the Varėna border team of the SBGS noticed a suspicious quadrangular shape in the middle of the Nemunas river, that forms the border with Belarus.

The border guards of Kapčiamiestis, about 4 meters from the shore, dragged a suspicious object trapped between the ice and the reeds to the shore using special equipment.

It turned out that it was a cargo packed in polyethylene – 1000 packets of cigarettes Minsk Capital with Belarusian stamps. A GPS transmitter was hidden in a bundle that was tried to be as close as possible to the shape and colour of the ice. Such devices are used by smugglers to track the movement of cargo.

There is no doubt that the cigarettes were dropped in the Nemunas on the shores of Belarus in the hope that the current would bring them to the Lithuanian side. Here the smugglers had to pull cigarettes out of the river and transport them to the depths of Lithuania.

When the Nemunas flows into Lithuania from Belarus, it borders the border of both countries for 17 kilometers. Border guards are constantly investigating such cases when smuggled smokers are being transported from Belarus upstream. For example, on March 10th. Druskininkai border guards from the Nemunas near the village of Švendubrė in Druskininkai municipality smuggled cigarettes with a GPS device also attached. The cargo dropped off the coast of Belarus, 2,000 packets of Fest cigarettes, was constructed as a circle, apparently in an attempt to make it more like the sex of ice.