Less room to smuggle goods

  • 2001-12-06
  • Leah Bower, RIGA
Illegal Estonian sugar, Russian cigarettes and Lithuanian pantyhose are flowing across the Latvian border, carried consistently in small amounts by individuals dodging customs taxes.

In an attempt to slow the flow of small items intended for resale once inside its borders, from Jan. 1, 2002, Latvia will reduce the value of goods people can bring into the country by half.

Previously, travelers crossing into Latvia could bring across 300 lats ($485) worth of goods without paying customs tax, an amount that has been dropped to 150 lats, in line with the 1,000 litas ($250) that can be brought into Lithuania and 5,000 kroons ($300) for Estonia.

"The aim of these new customs regulations is to curb this illegal trading and tax evasion," said Dita Klavina, head of the communications department at the State Revenue Service. "These people's ultimate goal is to sell the goods they bring across the border into Latvia, evading taxes."

Border passers are also limited to three pieces of any item unless the total value of what they are bringing across is less than 15 lats.

Items brought into Latvia for resale run from clothing and footwear to alcohol, cigarettes, spare auto parts, gasoline, sugar and flour, Klavina said.

And most of the people who bring across goods without declaring the items are for later resale are in their 30s to 50s, Klavina added.

More serious than the undeclared food items and mismatched stockings ending up for sale in Riga's Central Market are several recent attempts to bring in large amounts of a medication called Tramadol, which has both analgesic and narcotic effects.

One person on a bus coming from Kaliningrad via Klaipeda to Liepaja tried to smuggle 716 capsules of the drug across the border in a plastic bag taped to the inside of a pair of pants.

While there are up to 30 cases every week of people trying to smuggle small amounts of undeclared goods across the border, Klavina said, it is far more frequent to discover unclaimed goods on buses.

"After checking regular buses entering Latvia from neighboring countries, belongings with no owners are found," Klavina added. "People are smuggling, but when they face customs controls they don't want to be identified as the owners. They deny the goods are theirs."