Moldovan customs officers seize a batch valued at 1.3 mln lei

The Moldovan customs officers have seized at the checkpoint Giurgiuleşti-Galati a batch of paint pigment dye at over 1.3 million lei, Info-Prim Neo reports. As the head of the press centre of the Customs Service, Ion Magu states, the customs officers have traced over 22 tonnes of paint used for leather processing, valued at 1 mil 340 thousand lei. The driver of a “Mercedes-1840” lorry registered in Chisinau has presented to the customs officers the papers for the merchandise in the amount of 22,000 dollars. According to the papers, the goods were delivered by a firm from Stambul, Turkey, and were heading to Moscow. The customs officers found that the presented documents lack customs stamps of the origin country, while the driver held no export customs statement. The police investigation noted an essential difference between the declared and the real value of the batch of dye. The merchandise was estimated at about EUR 80,000, the addressee being another firm in Moscow, while the deliverer was from New Zeeland and not from Turkey. Criminal proceedings have been initiated under the article 248 of the Penal Code “smuggling in extremely large amounts”, which prescribes jail terms from 3 to 10 years.