Tag: smuggling

  • ‘Lighting up’ given whole new meaning

    Hand-rolling tobacco intercepted by customs officers as it was being smuggled into the U.K. is to be burned in an incinerator to help generate electricity for the national grid, according to a story by the Western Morning News.

    But the electricity generated is unlikely to blow any fuses – only 150 kg of tobacco is to be burned.

    The tobacco was detected by a trading standards sniffer dog at a parcel office in Plymouth, Devon, last year.

    It was hidden inside camping refrigerators, one of which also contained £38,770 in shrink-wrapped cash, part of the proceeds from a previous shipment.

  • BAT benefits from reduced illicit trade, says CEO

    British American Tobacco (BAT) is benefitting from the gradual deflation in the illicit trade of cigarettes locally due to the improved regulatory environment in Malaysia, according to a story posted on The Star Online.

    Managing director Datuk William Toh said the illegal buying and selling of cigarettes had declined last year by 1.6 percent compared to 2011.

    “We saw a slight reduction in illicit trade to 34.5 percent of (overall) volume last year.

    “Due to this, we are seeing a 0.24 percent growth in legal volume, which is the first time in many years where we have enjoyed volume growth,” Toh said at a briefing after the company’s AGM.

    “This is good news and we hope the Government will continue to put in more effort into this area. Illicit trade at 34.5 percent is high by any standards.

    “It is a difficult challenge as we have long coastlines with neighbouring countries where smugglers can easily enter,” he added.

    BAT attributed the reduction in illicit trade to the sustained excise duties for two consecutive years and the increased role by the various enforcement agencies such as the Customs and border patrol in nabbing smugglers.

  • Tobacco magnate Cartes wins Paraguay presidential poll

    Horacio Cartes, a Paraguayan tobacco magnate, faced various challenges during his presidential bid, which he won decidedly last week. He was pressed to explain why antinarcotics police officers apprehended a plane carrying cocaine and marijuana on his ranch in 2000; why he went to prison in 1989 on currency fraud charges; and why he had never even voted in past general elections.

    Still, voters across the country seemed ready to give Cartes the benefit of the doubt, handing him a solid victory in Paraguay’s presidential election on Sunday. He took 46 percent of the vote against 37 percent for his main opponent, Efraín Alegre of the ruling Liberal Party, with about 80 percent of the voting stations reporting. Electoral authorities declared Cartes the winner, according to an article in The New York Times.

    Cartes’s victory returns the presidency to the conservative Colorado Party — which held a tight grip on power for six decades, until 2008 — and opens a new phase of international scrutiny of Paraguay, the landlocked nation with a long reputation as a haven for smugglers.

  • Easy street: smoke smugglers net nearly $2 million a truckload

    Wanna make a quick $1,944,000? Buy a truckload of cigarettes in Virginia and sell them in New York.

    Yeah, it’s illegal. But that’s how much can be made from selling a tractor trailer’s worth (that’s 800 cases, each holding 600 packs of cigarettes) of low-tax Virginia cigarettes in high-tax New York, based on estimates from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

    And that’s exactly what criminals are doing, according to a story posted on CNN.com

    In 2011, more than 60 percent of all cigarettes sold in New York were smuggled in from another state, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank. That’s up from about 36 percent in 2006.

    It’s not just happening in New York. Mackinac says 15 states have smuggling rates that top 20 percent. Add in counterfeit cigarettes from overseas, and ATF estimates the lost government revenue at more than $5 billion a year.

    Mackinac and others pin the blame on rising state taxes, and say things could get even worse if President Obama’s proposed 94-cent-a-pack cigarette tax hike goes through. Anti-smoking groups say the smuggling numbers are inflated, and that the public health benefits of fewer smokers – the ones dissuaded by pricey packs – far outweigh any lost revenue or other effects of smuggling.

  • Pakistan has $175.8 million reasons to tackle tobacco smuggling

    Pakistan is losing 17 billion Pakistani rupees ($175.8 million) per annum due to the illicit cigarette trade, which represents about 26.7 percent of total cigarettes consumed in terms of volume.

    According to a research paper compiled by the Euromonitor International, and cited in a story published by the Asia News Network, Pakistan ranked third-highest in illicit trade in Asia-Pacific countries, behind Malaysia and Hong Kong last year.

    When compared to its Asia-Pacific counterparts, over a five year period (2006-11), Pakistan’s illicit cigarette trade registered the second-highest growth of 62.77 percent after Vietnam (70.7 percent).

    During the same period China, the largest cigarette consuming economy in Asia Pacific, registered an impressive contraction in illicit trade by 18 percent.

    Total government revenue loss over the past five years due to illicit trade amounted to a staggering 80 billion rupees. This is approximately equivalent to 11 percent of the funds approved by the Public Sector Development Programme.

    The document further revealed that Pakistan’s illicit cigarette trade comprises three main types, namely, local duty-not-paid (DNP), smuggled and counterfeit. Of these, local DNP cigarettes have the dominant share unlike the global norm where smuggled cigarettes are usually the real cause of concern.

    The local DNP cigarettes made up to 84.5 percent of total illicit market, while 12 percent and 3.5 percent were smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes, respectively. This high share of local DNP suggests that situation is more of an internal problem, thus highlighting the need for improving local law enforcement.

    Euromonitor estimates that an alarming 26.7 percent of all cigarettes consumed in Pakistan last year were illicit comprising local DNP, smuggled or counterfeit. This translates to a massive volume of 23.5 billion sticks. It further stated that during 2002-2011, global illicit cigarette trade contracted by 7.3 percent, whereas in the same period, the situation in Pakistan worsened with a growth in illicit trade of 113.6 percent. In fact, volume of illicit cigarettes more than doubled from 11 billion sticks in 2002 to 23.5 billion sticks in 2011.

  • Malaysia to stamp out smuggled-cigarette smokers

    The city hall in the Malaysian city of Kota Kinabalu, proposed that buyers of  contraband cigarettes be penalized along with the sellers of the smuggled smokes, according to a story in the the Borneo Post.

    Mayor Datuk Abidin Madingkir, who made the proposal in his speech during the  launch of Ops Pacak 2013, said buyers of contraband  cigarettes have never been implicated by the relevant authorities in the effort  to stamp out the smuggling and sale of contraband items, including cigarettes,  in Sabah.

    “All this while, we have only compounded or sentenced to imprisonment the  smugglers and contraband peddlers. We never penalized the customers. Hence, it  is time for us to think of imposing strict penalties on the buyers,” he  said.

    Abidin said that for a start, buyers caught with these contraband items  should be given warnings or reminders that their action of buying such illegal  items will not be without incrimination.

    “The aim of this is to remind them not to become contributors to the flooding  presence of illegal cigarettes in the local market,” he said.

    Abidin also spoke on the city’s role as a tourist location and how the  presence of illegal cigarette peddlers was an eyesore.

    “On the part of DBKK (City Hall), we have often received complaints from the  public about the sales of contrabands within the city. We only have a limited  number of enforcers and are ill-equipped to handle the threat posed by certain  peddlers and cigarette smugglers,” he said.

  • FBI sting smokes out fake Marlboro men

    For more than a year, the system worked flawlessly. Containers of counterfeit cigarettes shipped from China to the ports of Newark, N.J., and New York City moved easily through customs and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security without inspection.

    From the docks, the cigarettes, falsely labeled as Marlboros and Marlboro Lights, made their way to a nondescript warehouse in South Jersey, where they were readied for the final leg of their trip, the sunny skies of California. The transport crew, responsible for smoothing the way through Homeland Security and making sure the cigarettes – nearly 2.3 million packs – got to California safely was none other than the FBI, accordibng to as story in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

    The elaborate logistics operation was part of a sting to stem the flow of contraband cigarettes into the United States, according to court documents filed this week in U.S. District Court in Camden.

    FBI undercover agents were paid “handling fees” of as much as $55,000 per shipment to deliver the cigarettes to four men in California. Three of the men were indicted in the case. The fourth was named in an earlier complaint but not in the indictment.

    The fake Marlboros typically sell for half-price on the street. A bargain, perhaps, for smokers, but not for the State of California, said V. Grady O’Malley, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the case, because it lost 87 cents a pack in taxes, or about $2 million, according to legal documents.

    “Were the defendants New Jersey residents and we arrested [them] here, the New Jersey tax loss would have been over $4 million,” O’Malley said. Cigarette taxes in New Jersey are about $2 a pack, he said.