Drugs, smuggling money, fakes: Customs at Vienna Airport struck considerably more often in 2024 than in the previous year. More than 6400 attacks, including cannabis, millions of euros in cash and fake goods -record of a top year for the control units in Schwechat.
The spectrum of the attacks again varied from drug and money smuggling to product piracy to violations of species protection. State Secretary Barbara Eibinger-Miedl (ÖVP) referred to commitment, specialist knowledge and competence of the 283 customs officials in the East Office in the East Office. She described the hit percentage of more than six percent as high.
Vienna Airport is a hotspot in travel and goods traffic, said Heike Fetka-Blorgner, director of the Austria Douanekantoor. The East Office carried out 1.4 million customs treatment last year. The 101,000 checks in 2024 concerned 44,000 passengers and 57,000 vehicles, packages and postal shipments while traveling.
Cash procedures in the millions
The Customs team leader Roland Karner went in detail: according to him, 295 kilos of secure cannabis were with 225 kilos more than in the previous year. The cash procedures rose from one million to 3.3 million euros a year.
Karner described the find of 170,000 cigarettes in eleven chubby suitcases in three male passengers from Cairo last October. From 2023, cigarette attacks had almost tripled to 1.6 million by around 600,000. 15,000 cigars were also removed from the circulation, after 2,400 pieces a year earlier.
Ten tons of animal food
Product piracy is still increasing. In this context, reference was made to falsifications of jewelry, textiles, bags and watches of 2.5 million euros that were guaranteed. Almost ten tons of animal food and 16 tons of vegetable products were pulled out of traffic.
Among the 73,000 fake products were mobile phones and accessories (35,000 pieces for around two million euros), clothing (3900 pieces for almost 1.1 million euros) and 3100 shoes for 897,000 euros. Reference was also made to 4,500 fake plush toys as part of a focus campaign that was destroyed.
Vienna Airport treated 31.72 million passengers last year. That was more than ever in the history of the airport. 32 million passengers are expected in the current year.
Source: Krone
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