Contraband cigarettes seized in Greece

Police seized three truckloads of contraband cigarettes in northern Greece Tuesday and arrested three men on smuggling charges, authorities said. Police said the total amount confiscated would be announced Wednesday but described the seizure as a "large haul."

The Greek-made cigarettes had been illegally imported from the Romanian port of Constanta and unloaded on the Halkidiki peninsula, near the northern port city of Thessaloniki. The three arrested truck drivers, who were not named, were identified as two men from Greece and one from neighboring Macedonia.

Northern Greece is a key transit point for cigarette smugglers, while contraband sales account for about 7-9 percent of the Greek market, according to fraud agency estimates. Samples of the cigarettes were sent to a state lab to test whether they were factory-made or fakes, reports the AP. N.U.