Kleve/Karlsruhe (dpa/lnw) – The Federal Court of Justice has overturned the judgments in the trial of one of the largest illegal cigarette factories ever discovered in Germany. The Kleve district court had sentenced twelve men to two and a half years in prison in May last year. The Federal Court of Justice, on the other hand, acquitted individual men in a series of decisions published on Thursday and overturned the judgments – in part on formal or procedural grounds. Another economic chamber of the district court must now renegotiate the matter.
Customs investigators had confiscated more than ten million illegal cigarettes when they and police officers stormed a run-down hall in Kranenburg on the Lower Rhine. The people behind the factory, however, remained in the dark. The twelve defendants had been convicted of tax evasion, tax evasion and violation of the trademark law – or for aiding and abetting them. The verdict in May 2021 was preceded by an agreement including a penalty agreement. After the court assured them that they would remain in prison for less than three years, the men had confessed.
At the start of the trial, several defense attorneys emphasized that their Eastern European clients had assumed that the production was serious. They were recruited as foreign workers in their home countries, signed employment contracts and some were in Germany for the first time. They are not “members of a cigarette mafia”, but respectable, hard-working family fathers.
The court, on the other hand, had come to the conclusion that the men could not have assumed legal production in view of all the circumstances. The cigarettes are said to have been destined for the British black market with its high tobacco prices.
