All in all, border guards seized smuggled cigarettes worth LTL 2.428 million (EUR 0.7 million), compared to LTL 2.194 million in 2011, the State Border Guard Service said on Tuesday.
Border guards note that cigarettes are the most popular item to smuggle. They also say the volume of illegal cigarettes from Russia has been decreasing in recent years. Meanwhile, more cigarettes are smuggled into Lithuania from Belarus. Border guards on the Russian border seized 132,000 packs of cigarettes last year, compared to 1.290 million on the Belarusian border.
53 percent of seized cigarettes were meant for Lithuania's internal market, 45 percent for the European market, and the final destination of 2 percent of contraband cigarettes was unknown.
