WARSAW, March 6: Polish police announced on Thursday they cracked a major gang smuggling cigarettes from China and the former Soviet republics to Western Europe, detaining 27 suspects including alleged gang kingpins.

“One of the smuggling routes ran through the former Soviet Union via Poland to Britain. Another maritime route began in China to Poland and further west,” Lublin regional police spokesman Janusz Wojtowicz told Poland’s PAP news agency.

One alleged kingpins, a 49-year-old Pole, was questioned by German police in Aachen, Wojtowicz said. “This is the first international organised crime organisation of such substantial size to be cracked in Poland,” he said.—AFP