site.btaFour Factories for Illegal Production of Cigarettes Busted

Four Factories for Illegal Production of
Cigarettes
Busted


Plovdiv, Southern Bulgaria, August 25 (BTA) - The Plovdiv,
Southern Bulgaria, police and prosecution office have busted
four factories for illegal production of cigarettes, Plovdiv
District Prosecutor Roumen Popov and Atanas Ilkov, head of the
Regional Directorate of the Interior, told a news conference on
Saturday.

The factories are located one each in Toutrakan and in Gorna
Oryahovitsa, Northern Bulgaria, and two in Doupnitsa,
Southwestern Bulgaria. All are fitted with state-of-the-art
equipment for the production of cigarettes in various brands.
The factories constitute large, fully blacked-out premises, with
 dormitories for the workers, baths, a canteen with cooks, a
table tennis room, power generators, motion sensors and CCTV.
The factories have been in operation for two years now and
produced 100,000 boxes of cigarettes per day. The production was
 exported every 2-3 days and sold outside Bulgaria. The workers
worked 15-20 days in the month, and were rotated without knowing
 in which factory they were going to be posted.

A total of 42 tonnes of cigarettes were impounded, worth seven
million leva. Also impounded were 13.5 million cigarette filters
 and other inputs for the illegal production, and all of the
machines, forklifts, eleven heavy-duty trucks, vans and cars.

Also discovered was a building in the process of being made into
 a fifth such factory. A tobacco processing workshop was
discovered in the village of Kalougerovo, near the Southern town
 of Pazardjik, which supplied inputs to all four factories and a
 printing house in the seaside city of Varna.

A total of 23 persons were detained against whom charges were
pressed.

The illegal factories were discovered after an investigation for
 money laundering against two residents of Plovdiv who had
lavish lifestyles without apparent incomes to support them.
SN/ZH
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