A LATVIAN lorry driver who smuggled more than two- million cigarettes through Immingham Docks – dodging "huge" potential duty of nearly £500,000 – has been jailed.
He was part of a professional smuggling operation and had travelled from Denmark on a ferry, a court heard.
Jevgenijs Rauza, 42, admitted fraudulently evading duty on cigarettes on May 13.
Alasdair Campbell, prosecuting, told Grimsby Crown Court that Rauza was driving a lorry and a trailer when he arrived at Immingham from Gothenburg, Denmark, at 10.10pm.
The trailer contained six large water filtration tanks. Hidden inside them was a hatch to an inner area containing a large quantity of illegal cigarettes that were not on general sale anywhere in Britain. There were 2,128,160 cigarettes in packs of 20 or in cardboard boxes of 4,720.
The total duty that would have been dodged if the cigarettes had been sold was £494,819.
False paperwork claimed that the items had supposedly come from Sweden and were bound for a company in Peterborough – but it knew nothing about them.
Rauza had a previous conviction in Poland in 2011 in which he had been fined £2,500 for smuggling 40,000 cigarettes between Poland and Lithuania.
"It's thought it was the same brand of cigarettes," said Mr Campbell.
Stephen Lowne, mitigating, said there was no evidence the cigarettes contained any extra health risk.
The lorry was stopped by chance, although it was of interest to customs officers because of where it had come from, and it was a professional operation.
Rauza had his suspicions about the load and "his eyes were open to some extent". He had been given tickets, told where to go on a satellite navigation system and had been given a credit card to buy return tickets.
"He must be a trusted courier but he is clearly at the bottom of the chain," said Mr Lowne.
"He is the one whose head was on the block. The chiefs never stick their heads over the parapet in these types of cases. He feels he has been used.
"He wants to put this behind him and get back to his family in Latvia. He wishes to take his punishment and never to be in the same circumstances again."
Recorder Abdul Iqbal QC told Rauza: "There was a relatively sophisticated system in place to hide the cigarettes. The amount of UK duty that would have been evaded is huge.
"You knowingly brought these cigarettes to this country. This was professionally planned. You were clearly somebody trusted to bring a very large consignment of cigarettes in to the UK."
Rauza was jailed for two years and three months.
Jo Tyler, assistant director of Criminal Investigation at HMRC, said: "Rauza tried to evade half-a-million pounds in excise duty by smuggling more than two million cigarettes into Immingham Docks hidden inside water tanks. Tobacco crime undermines legitimate producers and retailers, costing the UK around £2 billion a year in lost revenue.
"This sentence should send a clear message to criminals that the penalties can be severe. Anyone with information about the illegal production or sale of tobacco should contact the Customs Hotline on 0800 59 5000."
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