Toulouse: 4,500 packs of cigarettes found in a trunk; a student and a shopkeeper arrested.

On paper, it was headed towards Paris. At the end of March, at the Toulouse-Frouzins tollbooth, customs officers saw a car approaching "that seemed to be hesitating a bit." The kind of detail that raises a red flag. An immediate check was carried out on this vehicle coming from Andorra.

Inside were two men with seemingly ordinary profiles. The driver introduced himself as a medical student, his passenger as a grocer, and they were headed for the capital. But the trunk told a different story, one far more sinister than their explanations. The officers discovered cartridges as far as the eye could see.

The result: over 4,500 packs of cigarettes of the same brand, totaling more than 90 kilos of tobacco, according to customs. This is far from a "quick fix" or a holiday souvenir. The two occupants eventually admitted that it had taken them "a long time" to buy this tobacco in Andorran shops, suggesting a planned purchase rather than a spontaneous stop.

The RN 20 reopens, traffic resumes

The scene itself is part of a well-known pattern in the Pyrenees. Andorra, with its more lenient tax system, attracts cross-border purchases within permitted limits, and then also fuels resale networks when volumes surge. Customs officials state it bluntly: since the reopening of the Pas-de-la-Case road, the RN 20, which had been closed above Ax-les-Thermes after a rockfall, "the smuggling of cigarettes bought in Andorra has resumed," proof that some habits die hard.

The case ended up in the Toulouse criminal court. The two men were sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, suspended, and fined €59,130. The cigarettes were confiscated and will be destroyed, a standard outcome in this type of case where the financial penalty aims to hit where it hurts.

The backdrop remains, and it's familiar to both motorists and law enforcement: the roads between Andorra and the Toulouse plain, monitored, bypassed, then monitored again. As long as the price difference remains a constant temptation, the safes will continue to try their luck, sometimes with unexpected drivers behind the wheel, and customs officials lying in wait.