Going Up In Smoke: Terrorist Financing And Contraband Cigaretking Case Study
Going up in Smoke: Terrorist Financing and Contraband Cigarettes
A strange bond exists between smokers, contraband operators, and terrorists around the world, as , contraband cigarettes indirectly fund terrorist activities.
By Antonio L. Rappa
For The Straits Times
In the year 2000, United States authorities caught two Lebanese brothers for running a multimillion-dollar smuggling operation, moving low-tax cigarettes from North Carolina to high-tax Michigan.
It was a major coup for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). But the bureau was shocked when it realised where the profits of the syndicate were diverted to: designated terrorist organisation Hezbollah.
The bureau quickly stepped up its focus on the ties between cigarette …show more content…
The Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a terrorist group operating mainly in Algeria and Mali, and responsible for several bloody attacks in northern Africa this year (2016), had banked millions by controlling cigarette-smuggling routes in the region.
When a suicide attack was carried out on Istanbul's main shopping street in March 2016, outlawed Kurdistan fighters claimed responsibility. The factions of the Kurdistan Workers' Party have long relied heavily on illegal cigarette sales, funnelled through Iraq, to finance their operations.
Even the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has banned smoking in its controlled area, is not above making money from cigarette smuggling. The Turkic-Syrian border has seen a doubling of such illegal movements since the start of the Syrian civil war.
A new study from the Macdonald Laurier Institute in Canada in March addressed the links between illicit cigarettes and terrorism squarely.
"Canadian law enforcement seizures of contraband tobacco routinely include high-powered weapons, hard and designer drugs, stolen vehicles and other merchandise, and lots of cash," it said in a …show more content…
Higher taxes, proposed flavour bans and raising of legal age for smoking, for instance, may help control tobacco consumption. But it would also unwittingly offer smugglers the opportunities to undercut legal tobacco products, obtain higher profits and invest more heavily in the lucrative illicit cigarette trade.
The same is true of standardised packaging of tobacco products, an emerging trend which has been adopted in Australia and about to be implemented in the United Kingdom, France and Ireland. Plain packs are also being considered by the health authorities in Singapore and Malaysia.
Late last year (2015), a public consultation was held here to hear views of the plain boxes with graphic health warnings, thus removing all promotional aspects like trademarks, logos and colour schemes.
Such a change will almost definitely make it easier and cheaper to manufacture counterfeit, or fake, cigarettes - a new threat in South-east Asia. Thus far, illicit cigarettes in this region has been restricted to contraband, which are cigarettes manufactured legally but smuggled into a territory to avoid
A strange bond exists between smokers, contraband operators, and terrorists around the world, as , contraband cigarettes indirectly fund terrorist activities.
By Antonio L. Rappa
For The Straits Times
In the year 2000, United States authorities caught two Lebanese brothers for running a multimillion-dollar smuggling operation, moving low-tax cigarettes from North Carolina to high-tax Michigan.
It was a major coup for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). But the bureau was shocked when it realised where the profits of the syndicate were diverted to: designated terrorist organisation Hezbollah.
The bureau quickly stepped up its focus on the ties between cigarette …show more content…
The Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a terrorist group operating mainly in Algeria and Mali, and responsible for several bloody attacks in northern Africa this year (2016), had banked millions by controlling cigarette-smuggling routes in the region.
When a suicide attack was carried out on Istanbul's main shopping street in March 2016, outlawed Kurdistan fighters claimed responsibility. The factions of the Kurdistan Workers' Party have long relied heavily on illegal cigarette sales, funnelled through Iraq, to finance their operations.
Even the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has banned smoking in its controlled area, is not above making money from cigarette smuggling. The Turkic-Syrian border has seen a doubling of such illegal movements since the start of the Syrian civil war.
A new study from the Macdonald Laurier Institute in Canada in March addressed the links between illicit cigarettes and terrorism squarely.
"Canadian law enforcement seizures of contraband tobacco routinely include high-powered weapons, hard and designer drugs, stolen vehicles and other merchandise, and lots of cash," it said in a …show more content…
Higher taxes, proposed flavour bans and raising of legal age for smoking, for instance, may help control tobacco consumption. But it would also unwittingly offer smugglers the opportunities to undercut legal tobacco products, obtain higher profits and invest more heavily in the lucrative illicit cigarette trade.
The same is true of standardised packaging of tobacco products, an emerging trend which has been adopted in Australia and about to be implemented in the United Kingdom, France and Ireland. Plain packs are also being considered by the health authorities in Singapore and Malaysia.
Late last year (2015), a public consultation was held here to hear views of the plain boxes with graphic health warnings, thus removing all promotional aspects like trademarks, logos and colour schemes.
Such a change will almost definitely make it easier and cheaper to manufacture counterfeit, or fake, cigarettes - a new threat in South-east Asia. Thus far, illicit cigarettes in this region has been restricted to contraband, which are cigarettes manufactured legally but smuggled into a territory to avoid