Costa News Spain Breaking News | English News in Spain.
The Spanish police have conducted raids on the Campo de Gibraltar.
The operation, codenamed ‘Taguada’, saw police action across La Linea de la Concepcion and San Roque, with Guardia Civil officers searching five properties and confiscating eight vehicles used for transporting the illegal tobacco.
Five properties were searched by police and 100,000 contraband cigarettes packs were seized. Another eight vehicles that were used to transport the illegal tobacco have been confiscated.
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The seizure, valued at around €450,000, marks one of the largest tobacco smuggling busts in the Campo de Gibraltar area over the last 12 months.
Sources in the police said that the operation aimed to prevent and disrupt the smuggling of tobacco from Gibraltar to Spain.
Due to the difference in price between Gibraltar cigarettes and those sold in Spain, La Linea has been a major tobacco smuggling hotspot.
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Gibraltar’s concrete measures have dampened what was an exploding illegal trade. The government raised tobacco tax by 25% in November.
In Spain, a survey on empty tobacco packets found that Gibraltar was no longer the source of illicit cigarettes. This had decreased from 67% of them in 2021 down to just 7.6% last October.
