A NORTH YORKSHIRE Customs raid netted one of the region's biggest hoards of black market tobacco and put the organiser of a highly-professional smuggling gang behind bars.

Undercover officers found 3.5 million cigarettes hidden inside 33 palettes of huge cotton bobbins when they burst into a barn on a farm at Towton, near Tadcaster.

Today, the man behind the cache, Christopher Bundza, was starting four years in jail, after a jury at York Crown Court convicted him unanimously of being concerned in evading £485,000 of Customs duty.

The court heard it was one of the biggest-ever seizures of smuggled cigarettes in the region.

"Your role was unloading, warehousing and organising others in what was a sophisticated and complex smuggling organisation," the Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman, told Bundza.

"I am satisfied you were part of a highly-professional smuggling team. Nobody could doubt that, having seen the extraordinary lengths which were taken to conceal those 3.5 million cigarettes in those cotton bobbins."

Bundza's barrister, Jason Macadam, said there were other men higher in the chain of command than him.

After the hearing, a Customs spokesman said: "We consider that the seizure of these cigarettes was a major success and also that the sentence received reflects the role played by Bundza.

"We have no doubt that the cigarettes would have been sold in pubs and clubs and car boot sales across the region.

"Many people say this is a victimless crime. It is in fact a crime that impacts on the whole of the community. Revenue raised from the sale of cigarettes is put to the benefit of all."

Bundza, 38, from Garforth, Leeds, denied being involved in cigarette smuggling and yesterday, on day two of his trial, claimed to the jury that he had not known the cigarettes were concealed within large cotton bobbins on 33 palettes in the barn on Rockingham Farm.

He rented the building and led four men to it on the day of the Customs raid.

Updated: 10:46 Tuesday, September 16, 2003