Gang get 18 years for smuggling 1.1 million cigarettes in city (From Daily Echo)

Latvian gang stashed tobacco in concrete beams on lorry headed for Southampton

1:24pm Friday 23rd January 2009 in News By Corey Stephenson, Senior News and Video Reporter

The concrete beams used for the smuggling

A GANG of smugglers from Southampton has been jailed for more than 18 years after smuggling 1.1m cigarettes into the country.

The trio of smugglers, originally from Latvia, were found guilty of evading more than £1.7m in duty by stashing the cigarettes in concrete beams in a lorry that was heading to Southampton.

Sergejs Frolovs, 34, of Northcote Road, Jana Sanina, 29, of Kingsclere Avenue, and Ruslans Rudzitis, 35, Cobden Avenue, were jailed at Maidstone Crown Court after the Polish registered lorry used for smuggling was stopped by customs officers at Dover’s Eastern Docks.

The court heard how HM Revenue and Customs officers found the trio had been involved in the frequent smuggling of cigarettes into the UK since 2002, bringing in a total of more than 12 million cigarettes.

The defendants had tried to pass themselves off to the authorities as migrant workers or students on low incomes.

But the court heard how Frolovs had opened over 20 bank accounts in the UK, using false identities, including a fake Danish passport that he used to launder the proceeds of his offences.

Found guilty of conspiracy to evade duty and 20 counts of money laundering, Frolov was jailed for ten years and six months.

In sentencing, His Honour Judge MacDonald, QC, said of the ringleader Frolovs, that he “was a consummate liar, who considered himself above the law”.

Sanina was found guilty of conspiracy to evade duty and five counts of money laundering and sentenced to three years.

Rudzitis was found guilty of conspiracy to evade duty and sentenced to five years.