{"id":442233,"date":"2025-12-18T15:24:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/12\/18\/contrabbando-sigarette-in-italia-due-impianti-fermati-per-un-danno-ue-da-160-milioni\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T16:33:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T15:33:18","slug":"cigarette-smuggling-two-plants-in-italy-stopped-for-a-160-million-damage-to-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/12\/18\/cigarette-smuggling-two-plants-in-italy-stopped-for-a-160-million-damage-to-eu\/","title":{"rendered":"Cigarette smuggling: two plants in Italy stopped for a 160 million damage to EU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"my-2 [&amp;+p]:mt-4 [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:inline-block [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:pb-2\">Brussels &#8211; Two factories capable of producing <strong>4 million cigarettes per day<\/strong> were seized by the European Public Prosecutor&#8217;s Office (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eppo.europa.eu\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EPPO<\/a>). The&nbsp;<span style=\"margin: 0px;padding: 0px\">organisation&#8217;s production centre, which manufactured smuggled products, was located in&nbsp;<strong>Pomezia<\/strong>, a few kilometres from Rome, in a factory spanning<\/span>&nbsp;over <strong>4,000 square metres<\/strong>. Upon entering, officers from the Guardia di Finanza in Rome found <strong>27 tonnes of cigarettes, 19 tonnes of tobacco<\/strong>, as well as 134 pallets of packaging materials. The second warehouse seized was in Ferentino, in the province of Frosinone, and was used to pack the cigarettes and distribute them throughout&nbsp;Europe.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px\">\nThe suspects, seven in total, may have been aware&nbsp;<span style=\"margin: 0px;padding: 0px\">they were being tracked, so they&nbsp;<strong>used jammers and frequency detectors<\/strong>&nbsp;to evade police detection<\/span>. The fraudsters will now face charges of <strong>possession of contraband tobacco products and counterfeiting of trademarks<\/strong>. The subjects are of Bulgarian and Ukrainian nationality.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"my-2 [&amp;+p]:mt-4 [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:inline-block [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:pb-2\">The European Public Prosecutor&#8217;s Office, in synergy with the Italian one, has the task of <strong>investigating illicit conduct that damages the financial interests of the European Union.<\/strong> In this case, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/09\/17\/eppo-17-7-million-fraud-in-italy-empty-shells-to-evade-vat\/\">fraud<\/a> is linked to the non-payment of taxes on the sale of cigarettes: a damage estimated by the EPPO at approximately <strong>\u20ac160 million in unpaid taxes and excise duties<\/strong>. In fact, the two plants produced cigarettes worth <b>\u20ac700,000 per day, or \u20ac240 million per year.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The seven suspects were capable of producing 4 million cigarettes per day worth 700,000. They divided their work between two plants one in Pomezia (Rome), one in Ferentino (Frosinone)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7891,"featured_media":215581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25712],"tags":[28974,27089,29481,28970],"class_list":["post-442233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-cigarettesand","tag-european-search-en","tag-frode-and","tag-contrabbando-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7891"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442234,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442233\/revisions\/442234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}