Illegal cigarette factory in garage cooperative: Scheme organizer sentenced in Odesa

 An Odesa court has found a man guilty of organizing an underground cigarette production operation in a garage cooperative and selling the products across Ukraine.

Detectives of the Territorial Office of the ESBU in the Odesa region established that the man used specialized equipment to manufacture tobacco products under unsanitary conditions, packing them into 20-cigarette packs without excise tax stamps. He subsequently transported the finished products to distribution and sales points.

He accepted orders and shipped them by mail throughout Ukraine via a specially created social media channel. There, he also regularly posted advertisements with information about the available assortment of tobacco products, their prices, and purchasing conditions.

He accumulated the proceeds from the sale of the illegally manufactured cigarettes in a dedicated bank account.

During the searches, detectives discovered and seized nearly 3,000 packs of cigarettes without excise tax stamps, over 400 kg of dried tobacco, machines for manufacturing and packaging cigarettes, 159,000 cigarette filter tubes, almost 13,000 zip-lock bags used by the man to pack the finished products, and handwritten ledgers.

In order to ensure restitution for the damages caused by the criminal offense, the court placed an asset freeze on the seized property valued at nearly UAH 1,4 million.

Based on the gathered evidence, the Odesa court found the man guilty of committing criminal offenses stipulated by Part 1 and Part 2 of Article 204 (illegal manufacture, storage, and sale of excise goods and excise tax stamps committed by a group of persons) and Part 1 of Article 209 (money laundering / legalization of proceeds from crime) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

The perpetrator was sentenced to 3 years of imprisonment with the confiscation and destruction of the illegally manufactured goods, as well as a fine of UAH 85,000, with a 1-year probation period.