FOUR men have been arrested and charged after more than two million cigarettes suspected of being illegal were seized by customs officials.

The haul was found on a lorry carrying fridge freezers in Middlesbrough, having been parked in Parliament Road in the town, near to the Newport roundabout.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) said the goods were discovered behind a shipment of fridge freezers.

It said officers identified a total of 2,204,620 cigarettes within the cargo worth £769,000 in unpaid duty.

Four men, aged 29, 36, 37 and 43 – one from Teesside and three from Poland were subsequently arrested.

They have been charged with the fraudulent evasion of excise duty less than 24 hours after being arrested and have been remanded in custody, HMRC said.

No court dates have yet been set.

Denis Kerr, assistant director of the fraud investigation service at HMRC, said the public could help in the agency’s efforts to tackle illegal tobacco.

He said: “The illicit tobacco market costs the UK around £2.4 billion a year, taking money from public services and undermining legitimate traders.

“If you have information on the sale of illegal tobacco please contact our Fraud Hotline on telephone 0800 788 887.”

The North-East, with its higher than average smoking rates, has long had the reputation of being one of the worst regions in the country for illegal cigarettes.

Figures from the Illicit Tobacco North East Study suggest that around 1 in 10 cigarettes smoked in the North-East are illegal, despite efforts to wipe out such sales.

There have been a number of significant seizures of such goods in recent years as HMRC has sought to crack down on the trade.

In March this year about 30,000 illegal cigarettes were seized from sellers in Darlington, while last month a man was convicted of stashing more than 7,500 cigarettes behind a false wall during a raid on his business.

But the seizures and even the recent haul in Middlesbrough are dwarfed by the twelve million illegal cigarettes found by HMRC in an industrial unit in Gateshead back in 2011.

It is thought to be one of the largest ever hauls discovered in the North-East by HMRC.