ENEWS: Huge profits tempt Irish citizens into smuggling (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Huge profits tempt Irish citizens into smuggling
Irish people have a talent for smuggling cigarettes, and not just into Ireland.
by  Frank McNally reports  

Date: Wednesday, 7/14/99

This week has thrown up two different types of cigarette-related crime,
both of which illustrate the huge profits still to be made from tobacco
smuggling.

The theft of 5.8 million cigarettes from a train in Co Louth on Monday is
a straightforward case of larceny, and as such is now being investigated
by gardaí. On the other hand, the smuggled consignment of 10 million
seized in Dublin Port is a Customs matter, and altogether more typical of
the illegal trade in cigarettes; except, arguably, in that it was caught.

Customs sources do not even try to put figures on the black market traffic
that goes unchecked, but admit it has assumed "massive proportions" since
1993, when the European Union's internal borders came down.

With the physical barriers removed but huge variations in tax still in
place, especially between northern and southern Europe, the opportunities
for smugglers were "greatly enhanced", according to one Customs spokesman.

And Irish people are playing a leading role in the international trade. He
adds: "It must be a question of inheritance, the fact that we have a
Border here, and a long tradition of smuggling." But whatever the reason,
Irish citizens are involved in every facet of the trade on the mainland
continents, "finance, airline ticketing, driving, counterintelligence, you
name it".

The phenomenon is supported by statistics. In 1997 Customs officials
seized 14 million smuggled cigarettes within the State; down to 8.5
million in 1998. In the same two years Irish nationals (and by extension)
Irish Customs officials were involved in seizures of 52 million and 90
million respectively elsewhere in Europe. At least 13 Irish people were
arrested in the process, in France, Spain, the UK and Belgium.

Typically, cigarettes are acquired tax-free from warehouses in southern
Europe and beyond, and smugglers "launder" the cargo through several
countries, where it is subject to only documentary control. The tiny
Pyrenean country of Andorra is a popular staging post: the Customs
spokesman jokes that if all cigarettes warehoused there were for local
consumption, every Andorran would be on 2,000 a day.

Andorra apart, "the trick is to get them on the move", he says. In the
process, cigarettes undergo a documentary metamorphosis; so that by the
time they reach their intended destination, they may be manifested in
shipping documents as chipboard, as was the case with those seized in
Dublin Port.

In some cases, smugglers target transcontinental lorries and load
contraband cargoes unknown to the drivers. At any rate, this is the
invariable defence of the drivers, although Customs officers may harbour
doubts.

The Dublin Port cigarettes, which had been tracked over 10 days from Hong
Kong to Europe, were probably bound for the UK, which has yet to adopt a
tax-stamp system for tobacco sales. The adoption of the system in the
Republic has effectively killed the illegal street trade in duty-free
cigarettes, Revenue officials claim.

But there are huge profits to be made in the international trade, and the
Customs spokesman admits that cigarette smuggling is "organised crime at
its best". He adds: "It's also `clean' crime in that it's tax crime. These
people are commodity brokers, which is not to say they won't graduate into
dealing in illegal drugs. We haven't found that crossover yet, but in the
context of organised crime, people go where the profits are."