Tobacco barons are being hunted across Europe afte

Tobacco barons are being hunted across Europe after masterminding a king size international plot to flood Britain with cut-price cigarettes.

Feeding a flourishing Budget-busting black market, Anglo-Greek smugglers pocketed up to pnds stlng 12.

5 million profit in five months running 160 million cigarettes into this country – the multi-million payday despite Customs seizing their final shipments of tobacco.

Arrests in February this year marked the downfall of one of the largest bootleg cigarette rackets yet to be discovered by the authorities.

It cost the Revenue pnds stlng 28 million in lost duty – part of the pnds stlng 2.

5 billion lost to smugglers each year.

Smuggled tobacco is now believed to make up a massive 34 percent of the British market – with major criminal gangs turning from drugs to bottlegging alcohol, tobacco and oil – in the form of petrol and diesel.

Cigarettes shipped by the container load into Tilbury Docks – Bills of Lading variously describing the cargo as innocent biscuits and puddings.

But behind the disguise of ‘all butter’ and ‘caramel creams’, ‘slightly salted’ crackers, and jellies, were millions of cartons of contraband.

Customs officers were even able to identify how the illicit merchandise was destined to travel from London to a lucrative market in the North of England and Scotland by studying the brands preferred by smokers in those regions and the makes of cigarette they seized – Superkings, Lambert and Butler, Embassy Regal and Embassy No 1.

But despite making a series of arrests in February, the two men behind the scam managed to slip the Customs net – John Kalageropoulos and Theodoros Savaidis flying out of Heathrow back to Greece.

At London’s Southwark Crown Court today (Friday) Yorkshire businessman Kenneth Hopper and Charalambos Kelesides were formerly found not guilty of being part of the plot.

Last month a jury failed to reach a verdict against them following a six week trial.

Hopper, 40, of Corr Head Lane, Bolton-on-Dearne, Rotherham; and Kelesides, 42, had denied conspiracy to defraud between September 1, 1999, and February 2 this year.

However, the jury did clear Sheffield haulage boss David Langley, 54, of Cemetery Road, Dronfield, Derbyshire of the same charge.

And following legal submissions during the trial, formal not guilty verdicts were entered against Kevin Hemming, 46, of Farm Crescent, Wexham, Slough, Frank Watson, 48, of Bootham Lane, Dunscroft, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, and Georgious Andreadis, 41, Nikoloas Papadopoulos, 30, and Panagiotis Xanthopoulos, 36.

The Greek men had no fixed address in this country but were flown in to held distibute the goods when needed, staying at a Park Royal home in West London.

The court heard Savaidis also used the Park Royal address, while Kalageropoulos rented a home in Hanger Court, Ealing.

David Cocks, QC, prosecuting, said it was a huge tobacco smuggling operation.

‘It was not some cosy domestic smuggling operation but a huge commercial
operation netting massive profits.

‘

The cigarettes were purchased in Greece but the gang made it appear they were for sale outside the EU and would be exported to Eastern Europe.

But Mr Cocks said in reality 20 shipping containers were sent to England, each holding between eight and nine million cigarettes.

‘Of those 20 containers, 14 of them got through and were distributed.

Six were stopped.

The 14 containers that cleared and were distributed contained about 112 million cigarettes, those that were stopped, 48 million,’ said Mr Cocks.

‘The total number of cigarettes involved, therefore, is absolutely vast.

‘We say the gross profit on the containers that got through the net and were
not stopped by Customs and Excise is between pnds stlng 8.

5 million and pnds stlng 12.

5 million.

‘

He said at the heart of the conspiracy was ‘a cloak of legitimate businesses’ importing the biscuits.

Shipping company P&O unknowingly delivered the cigarettes to premises on industrial estates in Southall and Staines, Mddx.

On February 2, a lorry – especially purchased by the gang, and with its pnds stlng 2,500 insurance being paid in cash and unusually Scottish notes – filled with cigarettes was trailed to a yard behind Watson’s home in Doncaster, Customs officers and South Yorkshire police swooping in a joint operation.

And Revenue officers were waiting at Tilbury Docks when the final shipment of three containers arrived on February 11.

ends