Construction of the largest NATO base in Europe has begun in Romania, the main purpose of which will be to protect EU countries, including Ukraine, from further Russian aggression. However, Western aid to our country has recently fallen to its lowest level since the Russian armed invasion. And there are reasons for this.
Experts call one of them our clearly criminal business, which significantly undermines the trust in us from European partners. In first place we can safely put the smuggling of tobacco products into the EU, which has acquired truly enormous proportions.
Thus, on March 14, Hungarian law enforcement officers detained a group of smugglers of counterfeit cigarettes made in Ukraine. This was reported by the Hungarian publication CAPITAL. The smugglers carried out their activities on the border of Hungary-Romania-Ukraine. During the special operation, 50 thousand packs of cigarettes were seized, which were imported illegally from the territory of Ukraine. As the publication notes, upon further inspection it turned out that a significant part of the cigarettes belonged to the COMPLIMENT brand, produced by the Lviv Tobacco Factory, one of the largest illegal factories in Ukraine. In total, 69 security officials and customs officers were involved in the large-scale operation.
Expected budget losses are estimated at more than 100 million euros. Investigations are currently underway to identify all persons involved in cigarette smuggling.
Now, in fact, let’s move on to the “Lviv Tobacco Factory” itself. The factory belongs to the scandalous Lviv businessman Grigory Kozlovsky, who is known only as the “tobacco king.” The factory itself specializes in the production of counterfeit excise-free cigarettes and has repeatedly come to the attention of law enforcement agencies. For example, during 2016-2018, not a single enterprise in the Lviv region bought a single excise tax stamp for the production of cigarettes, but during these three years, almost 5 billion cigarettes were produced in the same Lviv region. It is Kozlovsky who is considered the main supplier of smuggled cigarettes to Europe, which has been confirmed more than once.
On February 23 of this year, at the Tisza-Zahony checkpoint, Hungarian customs officers detained a man and a woman while trying to transport a large batch of cigarettes in a minibus. It is noteworthy in this situation that the detained woman had diplomatic immunity, thanks to which the driver tried to hide his illegal activities. The cargo compartment door of the car was sealed only with a paper tag with a Ukrainian seal on diplomatic immunity. When Hungarian customs officers said they were going to check the bus, the driver and passenger locked themselves in the vehicle and started calling someone on the phone. However, taking advantage of the moment, one of the customs officers managed to open the car door through a half-closed window. A total of 141.5 thousand packs of smuggled cigarettes were found in cardboard boxes wrapped in black polyethylene. Upon inspection of the cargo, it was established that it was planned to transport cigarettes of the COMPLIMENT and Lifa brands, produced by the same Lviv Tobacco Factory, into the territory of a European state.
But the most unprecedented case occurred exactly a year ago, in March 2023. Then Romanian customs officers intercepted a truck from Ukraine, in which, in addition to confectionery products from the ROSHEN factory, they found about 500 boxes with almost 4 million smuggled cigarettes. Romanian customs officials estimate that the excise duty not paid on this contraband alone amounts to more than 2,300,000 lei, which is 1 million euros. A criminal case was opened in both Romania and Ukraine. It is noteworthy that 99% of the detained cargo consisted of cigarettes of the “COMPLIMENT” brand, already known to us, again from the Lviv Tobacco Factory. The cigarettes were transported in a truck with a Ukrainian license plate BX5519SM. According to investigators, in 2022-2023, this vehicle BX5519SM alone made 16 shipments from Ukrainian to Romanian “ROSHEN”. If each one contained cigarettes, that would be tens of millions of dollars in black cash. In total, in the first three months of last year, the ROSHEN corporation sent 300 of its trucks to Romania.
With such “businessmen” as Grigory Kozlovsky, we may be left without help from European partners. Well, who will help a state, even a warring one, whose citizen is stealing from the budgets of their countries for tens, if not hundreds, of millions of euros per month, thereby seriously undermining their economy. And apparently there is no end in sight to this activity, because... Lviv Tobacco Factory has recently significantly increased its production of counterfeit cigarettes. And what is most alarming in this situation is the silence of the highest authorities of our country, which is “extremely concerned” about the slowness of European countries in the matter of transferring weapons to us. But, as we see, they are not at all concerned about the issue of the Kozlovskys’ regular “transfer” of smuggled cigarettes to the EU territory. Everything is smooth there.
Apparently, Kozlovsky has quite serious “tires” if he allows himself such chaos under the noses of the authorities and the security forces. Literally at the beginning of January, we wrote about how in the Lviv region his people earned 150 million hryvnia in a week from the resale of land. Moreover, the details of this scheme were described in some detail. They stupidly stole 17 hectares of Lviv land, and then sold it with impunity. And all this is happening in a country at war. A country where people collect pennies to buy drones, and in general to support the army. Guys, don't you think you've played too much? Or maybe I’ll remind you that the war will end sooner or later, we hope and believe in our victory, and the guys will return from the front. And they will return with weapons in their hands. Or are you immortal?
