Smuggling

Two migrants were found dead and 11 rescued late on Thursday after the boat they were sailing in from Turkey sank off Samos in the eastern Aegea. Another 22 were thought to be missing.

Coast Guard officers recovered the bodies of two immigrants -- a man and a woman -- off the coast of Samos, in the eastern Aegean, on Friday afternoon, after rescuing another 13 would-be migrants.

According to the survivors, another 20 people are missing and a search by the Coast Guard was to continue through Friday afternoon in a bid to locate them.

A 52-kilometer-long pipe used to smuggle fuel between the Turkish and Syrian border in the Narlıca district of the southern province of Hatay has been seized by the Turkish authorities, the Chief of Staff announced in a statement.

BELGRADE - The Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime suggested to the Belgrade Special Court on Thursday that businessmen Stanko Subotic should be sentenced to eight years of imprisonment for organising cigarette smuggling actions in Serbia during the '90s, while the proposed sentence for his associates entails two to six years of imprisonment.

Every fifth cigarette in Bulgaria is illegal, according to a survey on the illicit cigarette market commissioned by world concerns.

Bulgaria's budget records losses of nearly BGN 0.5B annually only due to the unpaid excise duty on tobacco products, private TV station BTV reports.

Officials from the directorate of nature conservation and national parks are holding training sessions for locals in mosques to warn them against the smuggling of rare insects and plants by tourists in the eastern province of Van.

Statistics show that about 600,000 young Romanians aged between 15 and 34 years old have consumed illicit drugs at least once in their lifetime and over 300 of them died due to drug use over the past ten years, according to the message of Director of the National Anti-drug Agency (ANA), Sorin Oprea, on the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

One in 10 smoked cigarettes in the EU in 2013 was illegal, shows a survey of KPMG, quoted by Mediapool.bg.

In it took part the tobacco giants British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Philip Morris International. 

At least 112 immigrants were detained Thursday for trying to enter Greece illegally.

A group of 32 immigrants were rescued early Thursday off the northeastern coast of Lesvos, in the eastern Aegean, after their small boat started to take in water. Coast guard officials detected and picked up 28 more undocumented immigrants off the southeastern coast of the island.

Members of a drug smuggling ring arrested following the seizure of 1.3 tons of heroin last Thursday had leased a warehouse in the area of Koropi, eastern Attica, 8 days prior to their arrest, it emerged late on Tuesday.