Five, including port workers, held for selling confiscated cigarettes

Two employees of the Thessaloniki Port Authority, a customs official and two other suspects are being prosecuted in connection with the disappearance last February of a large quantity of confiscated cigarettes.

Authorities had confiscated 2,078 cardboard boxes containing around one million cigarettes in 2000 and stored them in a Thessaloniki port warehouse.

The cigarettes vanished in February, costing the state 3.5 million euros in lost levies and tax revenues after being sold on the black market.