Police officers and customs officers have intensified surveillance in the Free Zone of the Port of Bar, in order to protect from smugglers the cigarettes that are stored and captured in the warehouses there, and whose value is around 60 million euros.
An interlocutor from the security sector told "Vijesta" that, stressing that the owners of some of the stored tobacco products are in a panic, because the cigarettes are about to expire.
Those cigarettes were stored in Luka Bar long before the Government's decision to ban storage. They were delivered by ships. According to the operational information of the security services, fictitious papers were allegedly made for export by sea in the earlier period, but the cigarettes were actually transported by trucks to the gray market. One of the interlocutors of "Vijesti" said that it is suspected that the other cigarettes should have left the warehouses in the same way.
"After the decision to ban the storage of cigarettes in the Bar Port Free Zone, a certain amount of tobacco products disappeared, and operational information indicated that this could happen again, if surveillance is not strengthened. Surveillance has been strengthened and since then, smugglers have been trying in every way to get hold of their valuable goods," said the source.
The same interlocutor also said that at one of the meetings of the Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazović with the police and customs officials, the coordinator of the security services said that he was not interested in whether the cigarettes would perish due to the expiry of the deadline, but only that no smuggled boxes left those warehouses. Allegedly, he also requested that at least one secret service agent be deployed in the Port of Bar.
"If their deadline passes, we will destroy all the cigarettes, and if someone can regularly take out the goods and pay duties to the state, we have no problem with that and we have nothing against legal business with cigarettes," Abazović allegedly said, according to a source from that meeting.
He claims that this caused a lot of nervousness among the smugglers, as well as that some of the "big fish" tried to influence the decision-makers, which they failed to do.
According to information from Vijesti, the security sector is also preparing new actions to combat smuggling, but they will not refer only to cigarette smuggling.
ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE OF THE PORT
Three days ago, the National Council for the Fight against Corruption at a high level adopted a recommendation that it will send to the Government to establish a system of detailed electronic records of the arrival and departure of goods from the Free Zone of the Port of Bar, as well as to collect data on the condition of warehouses, especially for cigarettes , tobacco, paper and filters for making cigarettes.
This was done at the suggestion of the head of that body, Vanja Ćalović Marković.
The Council announced that in that recommendation they will find a proposal to hire international experts from the UN, Italy, Great Britain, and Germany to build the capacity of the customs service, with the aim of conducting a detailed analysis of the situation in the Free Zone of the Port of Bar and submitting recommendations for changes regulations and practices.
Officers of the Anti-Crime Sector and the Revenue and Customs Administration began control in the Port of Bar in mid-June, checking the documentation of companies that import and store tobacco products.
At the time, it was said that the special police forces of the Anti-Crime Sector found large quantities of cigarettes, but regular cigarettes.
"Members of the Special Police Department controlled more than 20 businesses that stock cigarettes. It was established that there was a very large amount of tobacco products in stock... That the cigarettes were shipped to various destinations, mostly by ship, and less by land," said the interlocutor from the investigation at the time.
A month and a half later, the Government adopted a decision banning the storage of tobacco products within the Free Zone of Luka Bar.
Abazović said at the time that with that move, a strong blow was finally dealt to the organized criminal groups that organized smuggling through Luka Bar for decades, saying that this illegal business had come to an end.
Almost at the same time, the citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bogdan Mirković, was arrested for smuggling more than half a million worth of cigarettes that he imported into Bosnia and Herzegovina from Montenegro.
Those cigarettes, brand "marble", are part of the load "stolen" on July 10 in the hangar of the Free Customs Zone in the Port of Bar, which was managed by the companies "Aurora" and "Atlant Mont".
Allegedly, the cigarettes were taken from the hangar by a tow truck, and the theft of 1.182 packs of cigarettes followed claims that cigarettes were being smuggled through the Port of Bar and searches in the Port of Bar.
Mirković allegedly loaded the cigarettes nine days after they disappeared from the hangar - on July 19.
After the arrest of Mirković, who is believed to be the lowest link in the smuggling chain, the Montenegrin and Bosnian police unofficially announced that they were on the trail of the organizers of that illegal business and the people who hired him and managed the shipments of smuggled cigarettes.
The fact that cigarettes were disappearing from the warehouse in Bar was also noticed in mid-September, when warehouseman Đorđije Vučetić (28) and freight forwarders Nenad Franović (51) and Jovo Anđelković (38) were arrested in the Port of Bar, who were allegedly stealing and then smuggling for six months. cigarettes from warehouse number 2 in the Free Zone.
This was announced by the Police Administration (UP), explaining that after the hearing in the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Bar, the three were brought before the investigating judge, who ordered them to be detained for up to 30 days.
They are accused of damaging the state coffers by around 1.692.174 euros by stealing and smuggling tobacco products - on the basis of unpaid dues.
The disappearance of cigarettes from a warehouse was noticed by Port security officers, who reported it to the police on September 16.
On that day, at the exit ramp, they controlled a vehicle owned by "Zenšped group", driven by Baranin Franović and a citizen of Kosovo living in Bar Anđelković, who were transporting a large amount of cigarettes.
UP then explained that after the report, the police carried out an extraordinary inspection of warehouse number 2 of the Port of Bar within the Free Customs Zone.
Five days after the first report, the security of the Port of Bar informed the police that they found 2 packs of cigarettes in one room of warehouse number 38, "which are supposed to come from this warehouse".
Commenting on the case from Bar, the former acting director of the Revenue and Customs Administration (UPC) Aleksandar Damjanović said that the UPC will now do what "unfortunately was not done in previous years".
"According to the Customs Law, we will absolutely calculate the excise duty for the amount of cigarettes that is missing from the warehouse, because for us those goods have been put into circulation. This will be calculated jointly at the expense of the company that stored the cigarettes and its forwarder," he said.
Damjanović was recently relieved of his duties...
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