A SMUGGLER who sourced 117 million Polish cigarettes to be sold on the black market in Britain dodging £36million tobacco duty and taxes has been jailed.

Maciej Dzikowski, 49, was part of a gang who arranged for lorries to make three deliveries a week to storage units in Haslingden.

The lorries contained fake loads of plasterboard with hidden compartments for the cigarettes or had false paperwork to disguise the load as frozen food. Cash was handed over in car parks and laybys.

Drop-offs were also made to units in Rochdale and Liverpool, as well as a farm in Loughborough.

Dzikowski was exposed by the criminal communications network EncroChat takedown that was able to prove he conspired to fraudulently evade tobacco duty and transfer criminal property.

HMRC investigators were able to use the cryptic messages to help prove Dzikowski, from Brentford in London, smuggled the cigarettes between March and June 2020.

Dzikowski was found to have exploited the first three months of lockdown by sourcing Polish-made cigarettes to be used for the smuggling operation where they would be sold on the black market.

Gang members also sent approximately £8million in cash out of the country during the first lockdown in 2020, including £1.6million which was seized by officers at Dover in May 2020.

Cigarette sales were so vast, it took five-hour sessions for gang members to count cash and they wore face masks to protect themselves from the dust thrown up.

Money was sent to Poland and to a mysterious figure known as ‘Big Boss’.

The messages also included incriminating images of gang members hiding cash in supermarket bags and unloading cigarettes using forklift trucks.

Two other men ­— Hazhar Mohammad-Pani, 31, and Hubert Smolarek, 41, from Rochdale ­— were jailed for a total of more than 14 years in November 2021.