FOUR men have been arrested following a Customs and Excise swoop which uncovered more than three million smuggled cigarettes.

Officers discovered the haul -- with a value of around £750,000 -- in a warehouse at Abbey Village on the A675 between Blackburn and Bolton close to Brinscall and Withnell.

The cigarettes were being stored in a unit at the former Abbey Mill in the village.

The men were taken to Leyland Police Station where they were detained for questioning.

But police said the matter was being handled by officers from Customs and Excise.

The raid comes just weeks after Customs and Excise officials seized 2.5 million cigarettes and cash in Accrington.

Last year a total of 115million cigarettes were seized in Lancashire with one single haul of 24million.

Four men -- none of whom were local -- were charged with evading duty following the Accrington raid after cigarettes, with an estimated retail value of £532,000, were found stuffed inside 16ft long steel tubes from Russia stacked inside an industrial unit.

Customs officers had to use specialist equipment to cut through the metal to get to the boxes.

The cigarettes were then taken away to be stored in secure premises outside the county.

The process of removing the cigarettes from the tubes took more than six hours and officers estimate that the tax evaded was around £420,000. An undisclosed amount of money was also found hidden in the unit.

A Customs and Excise spokesman said that the haul was a significant amount and that there was a very real possibility that the cigarettes would have been sold locally at car boot sales, from the backs of vans and possibly outside school gates.

A Customs and Excise spokesman said today this latest raid was part of a continuous crackdown on smugglers who evade tax.