Monthly Archives: January 2019

From: The World Bank

Submitted by Sheila Dutta

Illicit trade in tobacco products undermines global tobacco prevention and control interventions, particularly with respect to tobacco tax policy. From a public health perspective, illicit trade weakens the effect of tobacco excise taxes on tobacco consumption – and consequently on preventable morbidity and mortality – by increasing the affordability, attractiveness, and/or availability of tobacco products. Furthermore, tobacco illicit trade often depends on and can contribute to weakened governance.

From: BBC

Almost five million cigarettes have been seized by police in an operation targeting loyalist paramilitaries.

The PSNI’s Paramilitary Crime Task Force seized the cigarettes and other goods, including tobacco, designer clothing, perfume and fireworks.

Searches on Friday centred on premises around Banbridge and Carryduff in County Down and Ballyclare, County Antrim.

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From:  albawaba Business

The UK’s top 32 tax criminals of 2012 have been sentenced to a combined total of 155 years and 10 months behind bars, including a gang of seven men who smuggled more than 20 million cigarettes into the UK from Dubai and a London-based jeweller who evaded more than GBP 7 million VAT by smuggling gold bought in Dubai into the UK.

The jeweller, Chaudray Ali, was sentenced to nine years in prison. The gang of seven, which described over 20 million smuggled cigarettes on shipping documents as babies’ toys, received a collective sentence of 24 years and six months.

From: Department of Justice/U.S. Attorney’s Office | Southern District of New York

Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Philip R. Bartlett, Inspector-in-Charge of the New York Office of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (“USPIS”), Angel M. Melendez, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”), Matthew Modafferi, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General, Northeast Area Field Office (“USPS-OIG”), and Joseph Fucito, New York City Sheriff, announced today the unsealing of an Indictment in Manhattan federal court charging SHAO JUN GUO, JIAN JIANG FENG, YUE JUAN CHEN, ZHURONG GAO, SHUI YING LIN, and WO KIT CHENG with conspiring to traffic contraband cigarettes and trafficking contraband cigarettes.  The defendants were arrested yesterday and will be presented before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger today.  The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman.  The defendants will be arraigned before Judge Furman on January 31, 2019, at 11:00 a.m.

From: The Guardian

Scamp the spaniel is so good at finding illegal tobacco, crime groups have offered a £25,000 reward for his capture

Name: Scamp.

Age: Seven.

Breed: English springer spaniel.

Occupation: Crime fighter.

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Of course. Spaniels are famously passionate about import duties. That’s not the only thing. Some smuggled cigarettes are counterfeit, bulked out with bits of rubbish including sawdust, dead insects and mouse droppings.

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