The farm buildings in the backyard of a property in Hajdú-Bihar County appeared ordinary at first glance, but the walls of a pigsty concealed a secret worth more than 40 million forints.
Based on a preliminary criminal risk assessment, suspicion arose that a large quantity of excise goods was being stored on the property. Following guidance from financial investigators, officers of the Enforcement Directorate of Hungary’s National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) arrived at the farm. After presenting the warrant for the premises inspection, the officers began searching the property with Balu, a service dog.
They first checked the residential building, where no signs of wrongdoing were found. Attention then turned to the outbuildings.
Customs officers noticed that the interior of a structure behind the pigsty seemed much smaller than it appeared from the outside. They deployed Balu, a cigarette-detection dog, who gave a positive signal at a false wall made of OSB boards.
From the hiding place, officers recovered 13,881 packs of various brands of cigarettes without Hungarian tax stamps, 33.73 kilograms of cut tobacco, 59 flavored electronic cigarettes, and 10 liters of alcohol of unknown origin.
The man living on the farm admitted that the black-market goods belonged to him. He stated that he had purchased the tobacco products from an unknown person in order to resell them and use the profit to pay off a previously imposed excise fine.
The officers seized the “stock,” valued at more than 42 million forints. Criminal proceedings have been launched on suspicion of violations of excise law and budget fraud. According to NAV, the man may face a fine of nearly 60 million forints.
