From: The Weekly Standard
Curbing the illicit tobacco trade.
The tenuous (and likely temporary) truce in Ukraine may have put another feather in German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cap: It seemingly vindicates her Diplomatie statt Waffen (“diplomacy instead of weapons”) stand against Obama. And it’ll be a while before everyone wakes up to how Russia uses the freeze to consolidate territorial control. In the meantime, Merkel is once again the woman of the hour in Europe.
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Consider the counterfeiting and smuggling of tobacco products, one of the most lucrative such trades (and one I know well, as subchair on tobacco for an OECD task force on charting illicit trade). As Interpol’s former secretary general Ron Noble stated in March 2014: “It is in the interest of all governments to establish due diligence frameworks and
‘know your customer’ programs such as those required for banks, and to demand track and trace systems for key component manufacturers to help combat the illicit trade in tobacco products.” Interpol and the OECD are focused on illicit tobacco trade because it is now as profitable as drug smuggling and growing at a rapid rate. The Center for International Maritime Security has identified shipments going through the
Assad-controlled Syrian port of Latakia and ultimately being taxed by ISIS on their way into Syria and Iraq.
