Customs Officers at Dublin Airport have smashed what’s believed to be a major cigarette smuggling operation.
Over 100-thousand cigarettes, valued at almost €40,000, have been seized from passengers on a flight from Eastern Europe.
As part of an operation by Customs Officers, 112,000 cigarettes have been recovered from passengers on a flight from Riga in Latvia.
Revenue had identified a particular gang, which based in Latvia, smuggling cigarettes through Dublin Airport and distributing them for sale on the black market throughout the country.
The cigarettes are valued at just over €38,000 and would have represented a loss of almost 31-thousand euro in revenue to the State.
In a separate operation Officers seized 27,000 cigarettes from passengers arriving on a flight from Tenerife.
Enforcement Officers at Dublin Airport seized nearly 39 million cigarettes last year.