Underground Cigarette Factory in Grobiņa Parish: Up to 1.5 Million Cigarettes a Day
An illegal cigarette production site operated for about a month on the territory of a former fur farm in Grobiņa parish, South Kurzeme region; 18 people, mostly Belarusian citizens, were detained.
An underground cigarette manufacturing operation has been discovered in Grobiņa parish, in the South Kurzeme region of Latvia. According to information presented on the LSM program “Discuss in the Evening,” the facility was located on the premises of a former fur farm and had been working for about a month.
The production capacity of the illegal operation was estimated at 1.5 million cigarettes per day. This indicates a substantial, industrial-scale process rather than a small workshop. Law enforcement officials detained 18 people in connection with the case. Most of those detained are citizens of Belarus, the program reported.
The site of the alleged factory is a former fur farm in Grobiņa parish, which is part of the South Kurzeme administrative area. No further details about the equipment used, the possible distribution network, or the exact roles of the detainees have been made public so far.
The case came to light through the LSM program “Discuss in the Evening,” which aired information about the scale of the illegal production and the number of people detained. While the program gave the figure of 18 detainees, it did not specify their names or the charges they may face.
Authorities have not yet released additional information about how long the facility had been planned or whether the operation was connected to larger smuggling networks. At this stage, the publicly available facts are limited to the location, the estimated production volume, the duration of the activity, and the citizenship of the detained individuals.
