Cigarette-Smuggling Gangs Sap Lithuania Budget, Spark Crackdown
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A man in a black wetsuit straps nine boxes to his body in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, wades into the Nemunas River and swims 200 yards to Lithuania and the European Union.
He drops his cargo as officers close in and 4,500 packs of cigarettes sink to the bottom of the river, according to photographs from the state Border Guard Service. The authorities aren’t always so successful, with the government estimating 110 million packs are smuggled into the country each year, costing it 500 million litai ($193 million) in lost taxes.