Montenegrin Customs on Sunday seized 3.5 million euros worth of tobacco in the port of Bar, warning that it will further tighten controls in the port that has become notorious as a cigarette-smuggling hub.

The Customs Office said it seized eight containers with 4,000 boxes of tobacco owned by a US company, Lenora International, registered in the US state of Delaware.

“Since May, the fight against cigarette smuggling has intensified, as this is the third major seizure. During a one-month period, Montenegrin authorities seized more cigarettes than any other European country,” the Customs Office said in a press release.

“We will not stop intending to suppress cigarette smuggling through our state because the port of Bar should become the backbone of Montenegro’s development, not a smuggling point,” it added.

But while Interior Minister Filip Adzic praised the fight against smuggling, Lenora’s international legal representative, lawyer Zoran Piperovic, claimed that the authorities had seized tobacco legally stored in the port and announced a lawsuit against Montenegro.

“Tobacco was stored in the port in accordance with legal procedures and was ready to leave Montenegro by ship. The Customs Office thinks it’s legal to take cigarettes because the shipowner is late, so someone will have to spend a lot of money because of their mistake,” Piperovic told the media.

Since the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Bar has become known as a centre for cigarette smuggling from where imported tobacco is re-exported and cigarettes made in Montenegro are shipped.

According to official data, 21 of the total of 26 companies with storage in the port are stocking tobacco. Last July, the government announced the start of a legal process to prohibit the storage of tobacco products in Bar as part of measures to prevent tobacco and cigarette smuggling.

On May 14, Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic visited the port during the seizure of 145.000 packages of tobacco, explaining that the deadlines for their relocation had expired.

“The government intends to set up a legal infrastructure for selling cigarettes and pump money into the budget. From this day, tobacco smuggling in the port of Bar is clinically dead,” Abazovic told the media.

On February 10, the Customs Office reported that tobacco worth over 10 million euros had been stolen from hangars in the port since December 2021.

Police arrested three people, including customs officers, on suspicion of smuggling 11,349 boxes of cigarettes out of the port.

On March 2, the then Customs Office head, Milena Petricevic, reported another tobacco theft worth 225, 000 euros, stressing that the security cameras had been disabled during the theft.

In May 2019, a BIRN investigation showed how Montenegro had again become the hub of a global tobacco smuggling scam, funneling millions of counterfeit cigarettes into the EU with “ghost” ships, shell companies and forged paperwork.

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