Officers from the Traffic Subsector of the Civil Guard in Jaén have carried out a major operation against tobacco smuggling. The intervention occurred after intercepting an articulated truck illegally transporting 520,000 packs of cigarettes, whose market value is estimated at 2,340,000 euros.

The driver of the vehicle has been arrested as the alleged perpetrator of a smuggling offense. The illegal cargo was discovered while the truck was traveling on the A-4 highway, through the Jaén territory.

The discovery took place during a routine road safety and transport checkpoint established by the Benemérita on the Southern Highway (A-4). Officers decided to inspect an articulated truck with foreign license plates that had raised suspicions due to several initial irregularities.

During the inspection, the civil guards consulted the bill of lading, which indicated that the truck was transporting bags of fertilizer for agricultural use. However, upon opening the semi-trailer, a suspected fraud was confirmed: only the first row of the cargo consisted of fertilizer bags, used as camouflage. The rest of the space was occupied by numerous white boxes neatly placed on pallets, packaging that did not match the declared documents at all.

After opening several of these suspicious boxes, the acting officers discovered cartons of tobacco inside without the mandatory Spanish fiscal seal. Once all the cargo was counted and reviewed, the seizure of a total of 520,000 packs of smuggled tobacco was confirmed.

The truck driver was immediately arrested for a smuggling offense, as defined in Article 2 of Organic Law 12/1995 on the Repression of Smuggling. This crime can lead to prison sentences of one to five years and fines that could exceed 14 million euros, up to six times the value of the seized tobacco. The detainee was placed at the disposal of the judicial authorities after police proceedings.