A businessman from Lanaken has been sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined €13.3 million, most of it suspended, after an illegal cigarette factory was discovered in a warehouse he rented out through one of his companies.
Two companies owning the warehouse also received a €120,000 fine. That, too, was partly suspended.
Two other men, one from Poland and the other from Turkey, had already been convicted in Poland for producing and smuggling the illegal cigarettes. They were not given additional prison sentences or fines, but will have to help repay €973,896 in evaded taxes plus interest.
The case dates back to 2019, when Polish authorities alerted their Belgian colleagues about a Polish gang importing and exporting counterfeit cigarettes between Belgium and Poland. That was after Polish law enforcers arrested a Pole unloading fake Richmond cigarettes from a truck and found conversations on his phone with the manager of a Lanaken-based company.
On 25 November 2019, Belgian police and the Federal Finance Ministry raided a warehouse at Europapark in Lanaken, where they found a partially dismantled illegal cigarette factory. They discovered various machines, boxes of cut tobacco, counterfeit Marlboro packaging, and workers’ sleeping quarters, with 131,000 cigarettes ready for shipment.
Investigations later revealed that at least 20,160 kilogrammes of tobacco had been processed into 20.1 million cigarettes. Several Poles previously prosecuted and convicted were found in the living quarters.
The men who appeared last month before the Tongeren court, including managers of two Europapark-based companies that leased the raided warehouse, were not involved in the earlier legal proceedings.
One manager was acquitted as he was unaware of the warehouse’s use. However, the second manager - his son - who knew of the activities, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and a €13.3 million fine, five times the evaded taxes and energy fees. Most of the fine was suspended.
The two companies were also fined €120,000, part of it suspended. The judge ordered the seizure of all tobacco, machines, and cigarettes found in the warehouse.
