A PALMERS Green woman who helped her carpenter boyfriend smuggle 161kgs of tobacco into the UK has avoided being jailed.

Giedre Giliene, 34, tried to dodge £39,000 of taxes by bringing the cigarettes into Portsmouth from Bilbao in Spain stashed in a camper van.

Giliene was helping her Lithuanian boyfriend Raimundas Duoba, 39, who used his carpentry skills to make false ceilings and floors to hide around 300,000 cigarettes inside the van.

They were busted in June last year, and subsequent investigations proved Duoba, using an alias, had smuggled 84,100 cigarettes into the UK which were stashed in an lorry at Dover.

Duoba, of Purfleet, in Essex, was jailed for 16 months on Friday, October 28, at Portsmouth Crown Court, while accomplice Giliene, of Rylston Road, was given an eight month suspended sentence and a 12 month supervision order.

John Cooper, HMRC Assistant Director Criminal Investigation, said: “This was a calculated and blatant smuggling attempt, which, if successful, would have robbed the UK of vital funds.

“Our investigations revealed that Duoba had recently purchased the camper van, adapting it to hide enough tobacco to make over 300,000 cigarettes.

“We will continue to work closely with the UK Border Agency to root out this kind of illegal activity and disrupt criminal operations wherever possible.”