October 22nd Webinar: Illegal cigarette manufacturing

In the past, illicit cigarette manufacturing has been viewed as a criminal phenomenon that only countries outside the European Union could suffer from. While there were isolated detections of illegal factories in the Member States before, this issue was far from being widespread and had no significant impact on the tobacco market which was hurt by the massive amount of original cigarettes smuggled from Eastern Europe, counterfeit products arriving from the Far-East via sea in containers and the intra-community contraband from low tax countries to high tax ones. During the last couple of years the situation had dramatically changed. While we still face the old challenges of smuggling we also need to counter the growing phenomenon of illegal cigarette manufacturing. Polish colleagues have detected 30-40 factories per year in their country but underground production sites have been found and raided from Bulgaria to the UK throughout the territory of the community. Organised crime groups set up factories in isolated warehouses often using brand-new machinery with high production capacity and earn the return on their criminal investment in barely a month. In order to conceal the illegal activity perpetrators set up cover enterprises, bring workers often from abroad and keep them isolated while `export` and distribute the products in foreign black markets. Organised crime groups specialised in this crime are highly resourceful and international.

This training event targets to describe the current criminal patterns of illegal cigarette manufacturing and the related practical intelligence collection and investigative methods through the demonstration of cases from Poland and Austria. Issues on international cooperation, planning and conduction of raids will be discussed as well as ideas on innovative steps tackling this form of excise fraud.