Sunday, January 27, 2013

No more Poppies to fund the war? The Blight. The Poppy Blight was more than they could tolerate.

The illicit trafficking of tobacco is a multibillion-dollar business today, fueling organized crime and corruption, robbing governments of needed tax money, and spurring addiction to a deadly product. So profitable is the trade that tobacco is the world’s most widely smuggled legal substance. This booming business now stretches from counterfeiters in China and renegade factories in Russia to Indian reservations in New York and warlords in Pakistan and North Africa....

5:30 AM Monday Jan 28, 2013
By Jamie Doward

For many years (click here) Mokhtar Belmokhtar was little more than a footnote in the intelligence reports analysing the increasingly muscular presence of Islamist groups in Saharan Africa.
The man whose al-Qaeda-inspired Signed in Blood Battalion led the attack on the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria, in which at least 38 people were killed, was considered a relatively unimportant figure in the political ecosystem of the vast region....

Police were called to the firm's holding yard at Wetherill Park early on Saturday morning after employees discovered it had been broken into and four pallets of cigarettes had been stolen.
Police allege that CCTV footage at the yard showed three men breaking into the premises at about 1am (AEDT).
The trio then used a forklift to remove the pallets before placing them in a waiting truck, police said on Sunday.
The truck was later found burnt out at Minchinbury.
While the cigarettes have a wholesale value of about $746,000, police said they would retail for approximately $1.87 million.
A similar incident occurred at the same location a couple of weeks ago and detectives believe they are linked.
On January 13, three pallets of cigarettes were stolen from the holding yard after a number of men gained entry.
The cigarettes stolen during that break-in also have an estimated wholesale value of approximately $746,000....
When a get away truck is burned to conceal evidence, this is called organized crime. Given the fact this is New Zealand, there is a good chance the culprits are operating from Indonesia.

 The article below is from "Indonesia Tobacco."
November 18, 2012
Source: independent.co.uk

The number of cigarettes (click here) bought in the UK which have avoided duty and taxes is set to soar, one of the country's top three manufacturers has warned.

Japan Tobacco International, the owner of UK-based Gallaher, conducted a secret shopping trip around north-west London that revealed a huge range of counterfeit cigarettes and rolling tobacco being sold for around half the retail price. 

These include well-known brands of cigarettes where the packaging is written in Spanish (or any other language that is convenient) but the tax stamp is Belgian and rolling tobacco which contains large amounts of impurities.

The firm believes that after two of the largest duty hikes in the past two Budgets – a total of 70p on a packet of 20 – the rate of smuggling and production of counterfeit cigarettes will soar....
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