OREANDA-NEWS. August 23, 2012. The Heads of law enforcement departments of Customs services of Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland discussed the questions of law enforcement collaboration and protection of economic interest in Kaliningrad.

One of the results of such collaboration became the operation, carried out by the Main Department for Smuggling Control and the Customs Service of Kingissepp together with Estonian colleagues. As the result of this operation, the activity of the international criminal group, illegally importing fish to Russia, has been terminated. In 2010-2011 the group of Estonian citizens, actively assisted by one Estonian and affiliated Russian enterprise, imported chilled trout and salmon at low customs cost. During the customs declaring procedure false documents for the goods with false indication of the country of origin and forged veterinary certificates were submitted. It was found out that the fish was purchased in Norway and imported to the territory of Estonia with the help of an Estonian company, where the fish was repacked, and new documents, where the origin of the fish was indicated as Estonian, were forged. Moreover, falsified veterinarian certificates and invoices were made. The cost of the goods in the invoices was deliberately lowered to decrease the sum of customs fees for the fish import to Russia.

As the result, the sum of unpaid customs fees for 65 commercial batches comes to more than 20,5 million rubles.

The Kingissepp Customs initiated a criminal case according to Part 2 Article 194 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code in respect to 3 citizens. In May 2012 the criminal case was passed to North-West Transport Investigation Department of the Russian Federation Investigation Committee.