27/09/2019
In spring 2019 Lex Gaudius attorneys at law were involved in an interesting aggravated tax fraud case regarding organised cigarette smuggling from Russia to Finland. In January 2019, the Finnish customs authorities caught an organised cigarette smuggling ring red-handed from the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. After a further investigation, a pattern regarding cigarette to Finland was found by the customs authorities.
The prosecutors of Itä-Uusimaa and the Republic of Finland/Finnish customs as a plaintiff pressed charges against six Russian defendants – one of them was represented by Lex Gaudius – for six counts of gross tax fraud that had occurred between late 2018 and early 2019. The prosecutors and the plaintiff originally claimed almost 160 000 euros jointly from the defendants.
However, Lex Gaudius attorneys at law managed to find discrepancies from the original calculations delivered by the customs authorities. In precise, the discrepancies originated from miscalculations of customs tariff, the formula used to calculate the amounts of smuggled cigarettes (cigarette cartons per kilogram) in conjunction with smuggled cigarette labels (L&M instead of Marlboro).
As a result of the discrepancies discovered by the Lex Gaudius attorneys at law, the claimed amount mitigated nearly 20 000 euros for the benefit of the defendants. After the last trial, defendants were deported back to Russia.
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