Marijampolė officials have detained people who stole expensive agricultural machinery abroad, local police said on Monday.

Marijampolė Criminal Police and Šakiai district officers organised a detention operation on 8 August, during which three members of the organised criminal group, two of whom are residents of Marijampolė county and one of Kaunas city, were arrested.

The members of the group organised and carried out thefts of expensive agricultural machinery in Denmark and the Netherlands. They transported the machinery in trucks to Lithuania, where the body identification numbers were forged and the machinery was sold.

The members of the group used professional counter-intelligence tools to carry out their criminal activities, the report said.

A total of five forklift trucks stolen in Denmark and the Netherlands - a „Shaffer“, a „Giant G2500HD“ and a „AVANT TECNO OY“ - were seized during the course of the investigation, which were possibly stolen by members of the arrested group.

The incident is the subject of a pre-trial investigation.

All three detainees were sentenced by the court to the strictest precautionary measure of arrest.