From: Simon Clark/Taking Liberties
Today’s Sun features a special report, ‘How fake cigs fund terror’:
The latest wave of terror by Irish Republicans is being funded by a vast counterfeit cigarette smuggling trade, a Sun investigation reveals.
It’s behind a paywall but the gist of it is this:
- Fake fags that fund the New IRA are being shipped in from China.
- They are sold at car boot sales, on street corners and in pubs in Britain and Ireland where tobacco duty is the highest in Europe (surprise, surprise).
- Lost tobacco duty is costing the British government alone around £2 billion a year.
The report is splashed over two pages and the Sun describes it as an exclusive. In fact, the issue is already well documented.
In June 2013 the Daily Mail reported:
Some of the IRA’s most notorious terrorists have become multi-millionaires by flooding mainland Britain with illegal cigarettes …
The cigarettes originate from the Far East and are made of second-hand tobacco and even waste …
They are packaged as recognised brands and sold at a cheaper price …
The Sun reports that “Plans to sell fags in plain packs could make them easier to copy”.
