Finančná správa puts prevented excise-tax losses from illegal tobacco at €88 million

Finančná správa reported on 30 October 2026 on operations against the illegal production and trade of tobacco products from January 2024 through the end of September 2026. The authority calculates that the detected cases prevented €88 million in excise-tax losses. This is the tax and customs administration’s own estimate, not an amount already recovered in payments.

Over that period, Finančná správa’s criminal office handled 36 cases, uncovered 18 illegal production sites and seized almost 172 million cigarettes. It also confiscated more than 364 tonnes of tobacco, which the authority says could have produced almost another 500 million cigarettes. Production and packaging lines were seized alongside the finished goods and raw material.

The estimated excise-tax exposure was about €11.7 million in the 2024 cases, €49.5 million in 2025 and €26.8 million in the first nine months of 2026. The authority found the most illegal factories—nine—in 2025, followed by another six by the end of September 2026. Finančná správa says the combined cigarette and tobacco seizures, after converting the raw tobacco into cigarette equivalents, amounted to more than twice KPMG’s estimate of Slovakia’s 2025 annual illegal-cigarette consumption of 310 million units.

The announcement gives examples of major operations. In Skalica and Markušovce in February 2025, officers seized more than 19 million cigarettes, over 48 tonnes of raw tobacco and nearly 17 tonnes of cut tobacco; the estimated combined excise and VAT loss exceeded €15 million. A Žilina operation in April 2025 yielded 43.5 million cigarettes and 17.5 tonnes of tobacco mixture, while an operation in the Nitra region in September 2026 found more than 435,000 packs and another 43,000 loose cigarettes. The authority says it worked with other security bodies and foreign partners on extensive cases.