Customs officers at the Kulata border crossing have found 3,950,000 cigarettes without tax stamps hidden among crisps in a lorry, the Customs Agency said. At court valuation prices, the cigarettes are worth about €750,000.

The lorry was travelling from Greece to Bulgaria. Its papers listed boxes of crisps, but officers also found 11 pallets of cigarettes of two brands. Early information shows the load was heading for Ukraine.

The driver has been charged with holding a large amount of excise goods without tax stamps. Blagoevgrad district prosecutors are overseeing the pre-trial investigation.

The Customs Agency says this is the third lorry carrying illegal cigarettes through the crossing in the past two weeks. The three loads held 21.6m cigarettes. In the previous case at Kulata, nearly 9m cigarettes were hidden among cornflakes.

In all, five large shipments with more than 27.5m illegal cigarettes have been seized in two weeks at Kulata and at the Lesovo customs point on the Turkish border. The tobacco products are worth about €6m.

Customs officers in Vidin found marijuana in pallets of peanuts earlier this month. In September, officers from the Customs Intelligence and Investigation department at the Sofia Customs Territorial Directorate seized 66,702 ml of e-cigarette liquid in several checks.