After the start of the military operation in Ukraine, the Latvian State Revenue Service (SRS) banned the transport of 3,692 goods that fell under sanctions. On this subject informed Press.lv with reference to the deputy director general of the state tax service in the area of customs, the head of the customs department of the republic, Raimonds Zukuls.
“In order to prevent the risk of violation of sanctions, the SRS customs department carried out 131,812 documentary checks and 4,047 physical checks of the goods,” Zukuls said.
He said that violations are recorded when transporting goods through Latvia to Russia and Belarus, and in the opposite direction.
In addition, the SRS has initiated approximately 150 criminal cases due to the violation of sanctions against Russia and Belarus. However, only three of them have been brought to the stage of criminal prosecution, as the process of applying for international assistance is complex and time-consuming, the acting director explained. Dairis Anins, head of the tax and customs police department of the SRS.
Zukuls listed the categories of goods that were most often attempted to smuggle across the Latvian border despite the imposed sanctions: wooden products, appliances and “appliances”, luxury goods, glass and furniture.
The official explained that in some cases, businessmen who organize the transport of goods “change the combined article code” on the product in order to pass it off as something else that is not subject to penalties.
“These cases are handled by testing samples of the product in a lab to determine if the product matches the listed code in terms of composition,” Zukuls said.
In mid-March, Reuters reported that in recent weeks Russian companies had increased the number of requests for help from their partners in Kazakhstan to circumvent sanctions. The agency’s interlocutors explained that Russia’s requests relate to the delivery of bearings, aircraft parts, rare earth metals, industrial and radio equipment, electronics, turbines, materials for production of bank cards and other goods across the land border of Kazakhstan.
