More than 400,000 euros of money of suspicious origin is found in a car on the Latvian-Lithuanian border / Article

The car had license plates of the Federal Republic of Germany.

A German citizen and a Moldovan citizen were in the vehicle, who had not declared cash, could not explain and present documents of the origin of the money. During the customs control, the persons were asked whether cash should be declared, to which both persons answered in the negative. Taking into account that it was not possible to carry out the in-depth control on the spot, it was decided to do it at the customs control point of the Freeport of Riga in Riga, with the participation of a canine specialist of the SRS Customs Administration with a working dog for searching for cash.

After this statement, the German citizen stated that there was cash in the vehicle of about 400,000 euros, which he wanted to declare.

The undeclared cash found was seized and the persons were detained. All withdrawn money has been deposited in the Treasury account. Persons released and security measures not related to deprivation of liberty applied to them.

The criminal process has been initiated for the criminal offenses provided for in the third part of Article 195 of the Criminal Law for the possible laundering of criminally obtained financial assets, if it has been committed in a large amount.

As part of the initiated criminal proceedings, five sanctioned searches were carried out (four of them in Riga, one in Mārupe district), and

during them, additional cash was withdrawn – 102,240 euros, 45,466 US dollars, as well as banknotes in other currencies.

The SRS reminded that when crossing the state border of the Republic of Latvia (both entering and leaving) in places where it is also the external border of the European Union, any person is obliged to declare cash in the amount of 10,000 euros or more.

On the other hand, in accordance with the sanctions imposed by the European Union against Russia and Belarus, it is forbidden to export to the mentioned countries banknotes denominated in the official currency of any member state of the European Union. The prohibition does not apply if the cash is taken out in a reasonable amount only for personal travel needs or diplomatic needs.

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