* The targeted customs: Sighet, Halmeu, Petea, Borş and the Diocese of Bihor
* The senator claims that the factions involved in cigarette smuggling are now moving into drug traffic
* Yesterday"s controls on the border with Serbia should have been accompanies by similar actions on the border with Hungary
* The head of the customs, up for indictment?
The following raids of the investigators will take place in the customs of the counties of Satu Mare and Maramureş, Valer Marian, PSD senator of Satu Mare and vice-president of the Commission for combating corruption said to BURSA. Valer Marian said: "According to the information I have received, I can tell you that most likely, in the following days, there will probably be more raids in the customs of North-Western Romania: Sighet, Halmeu Petea, Borş and the Diocese of Bihor. In Satu Mare, the evidence has been submitted some time ago and over 40-50 policemen and customs officers are targeted. The cases may have already been drawn up".
Valer Marian (former prosecutor) said that in the North-Western area of Romania, there are cross-border criminal groups involved in cigarette smuggling, with ramifications in Ukraine as well as in Hungary - which is a member of the Schengen space.
In his opinion, if the desire to eliminate cigarette smuggling is genuine, then "prosecutors should go all the way to the top" instead of investigating customs officers and policemen, who are merely "pawns".
"So far, it"s only the small fish that caught; this is no way to fix the problem, because these networks rebuild themselves very quickly", the senator says. Officials sources however, told us that today, the head of the National Customs Authority, Traian Radu Mărginean, would be summoned to the headquarters of the National Anticorruption Department of Oradea, to provide explanations on the graft case o
