From: The Morning News
Where there’s smoke, there’s smuggling. Before the Ukrainian border became a dangerous war zone, it was a profitable bootlegging arena.
The 7:10 a.m. bus to Suceava was almost entirely empty and quiet. Well, except for the bus driver. With foamy spittle amassing on his lips as he spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, he kept thrusting a carton of cigarettes in my face, waving it wildly. And with each new response from me—all versions of “No, thank you” in any language I could butcher—both the cigarettes and the spittle came closer. My girlfriend, Erin, sitting next to me, was just as perplexed.
We’d arrived in Chernivtsi, the largest city in southwestern Ukraine, the afternoon before, and now were on our way to Romania. In the summer of 2008, well before Ukrainian borders were crossed by invading Russian troops, we didn’t think much of what lay ahead of us. We’d been bouncing around Eastern Europe for three weeks and figured our jaunt into Romania would be a forgettable affair.
“He doesn’t want to sell you the cigarettes,” a brown-haired man declared in British-accented English. “He wants you to take them across the border for him.”
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What’s happening on a regular basis on the Ukrainian border is happening on borders in other parts of the world, too. With 11 percent of cigarette sales worldwide coming through illegal sales of trafficked cigarettes, countries more powerful than Ukraine—and groups more powerful than the smuggling grandmas—play a vital role. In China alone, hundreds of illicit cigarette factories produce a whopping 400 billion cigarettes a year, with fake Marlboros being the most popular brand. Both Hezbollah and the Taliban count on their control of illegal cigarette trade to finance some of their terrorist activities. And even though fines for cigarette companies’ role in the illegal trade of their “lost” product have now eclipsed $1 billion, profits from the illegal cigarette trade are still much higher.
Closer to home, in Canada, police believe that there are 105 different groups—most related to organized crime—involved in smuggling cigarettes to and from the United States. In April of 2014, Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested 25 people in Quebec as part of a smuggling ring that included 40,000 kilograms of illicit cigarettes worth roughly $7 million.
