Businessman remanded in illegal cigarettes case

The Larnaca District Court issued an eight-day remand order against businessman and former chairman of AEK Football Association Stavros Xenis, from Larnaca, regarding investigations into a case of illegal import and possession of cigarettes and a false statement.

The demand for the detention of Xenis was submitted by customs officials Costakis Georgiou and Maria Charalambous.

The court heard that the customs authorities had found a container at Larnaca Airport on Wednesday night containing cigarettes worth over a million pounds (1 Cyprus pound is trading at about 2 US dollars).

The container was transported to Limassol Port from Dubai and the documents accompanying it said it contained furniture worth 6,500 pounds.

When the commissioned customs broker asked for the container to be sent to the destination mentioned in the documents, he was joined by customs officials.

After many hours of searching, the recipient of the container was not found and thus the Customs Department decided to transport it to the customs warehouses at Larnaca Airport.

Shortly before Xenis appeared before the court, the head of the Customs investigation sector and information system Niki Hadjiyianni said that when the officials opened the container they found ‘950 cases with 47,477 boxes of cigarettes,’ with 9,495,400 pieces. The total tax, VAT and consumer taxes are estimated at 741,740 pounds.

According to Hadjiyianni, the container and its contents were confiscated.

Police officers visited the customs warehouses to investigate the case in cooperation with the customs officials. Special equipment was taken to examine the content of the packages, to determine if they contained drugs.