A Kent-based lorry driver who drove through the Customs controls at Dover’s Eastern Docks without stopping has been jailed for five years, after being found guilty of smuggling 7,169,400 cigarettes and evading revenue of more than £1 million.

Maidstone Crown Court heard that on January 27 2006 Revenue and Customs officers at the inward freight controls attempted to intercept a lorry which had arrived on a ferry from Calais. The vehicle failed to stop and drove out of the docks. Following a search of the local area by officers the truck, minus its trailer, was found in a lay by on the A256.

The driver, Manuel Alves Alves, 45, of Birkbeck Road, Beckenham, was sitting in the cab and said he had dropped the trailer at the north bound M2 Medway services.

The service station was searched but the trailer was not found. Customs officers then discovered the abandoned trailer at the Adelaide Café on the A258 Deal to Sandwich road some seven miles from the lay by in which he was parked.

The trailer was searched and the cigarettes were found hidden in the load. The revenue evaded amounted to £1,080,792.00.

On Monday, Alves Alves was sentenced to five years imprisonment for the excise offence and received two further sentences of nine months each for money laundering offences. All three sentences are to run concurrently.

Anyone with information about activity they suspect may be linked to cigarette and tobacco smuggling should call the 24-hour hotline on 0800 59 5000.