CANBERRA: Middle Eastern crime gangs are behind the massive boom in the illicit tobacco market in Australia. The gangs are flooding our cities with illegal cigarettes and tobacco as they seek to cash in on smokers looking to save money on the black market. Figures reveal a huge increase in the importation of illegal cigarettes and “chop chop” tobacco via sea and air over the past year.
The chief executive of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, Roman Quaedvlieg, said authorities were now contending with “more players” in the black market, with increasing numbers of criminals attracted to the lucrative business.“Certainly onshore, the people who are involved in the Australian end of the importation are ethnically based crime gangs and predominantly Middle Eastern,” Mr Quaedvlieg said.
Chop chop bound for Australia usually comes from Indonesia while the millions of illicit cigarettes that enter the country come from the UAE. Between July and December last year, authorities made 27 detections of chop chop, weighing 69 tonnes, in sea cargo.Almost all of the tobacco entered Australia through Melbourne and Sydney ports. In the same period, 16 million cigarettes which entered the country via sea cargo were also seized.
The amount of illegal tobacco being smuggled by air also shot up dramatically, with more than 500 detections in the last six months of 2014, including seven million illegal cigarettes. The same period the year before saw only 190 detections.“We recognise this problem,” Mr Quaedvlieg said.“It is a priority and we are dealing with it. “We are seeing the same scattergun phenomenon which we see in the importation of drugs with illicit tobacco.
“We are seeing scattergun imports across air cargo, international mail and travelling passengers.“The air stream has become an efficient and fast supply chain.”Australian authorities are working closely with overseas agencies and big tobacco companies to try to clamp down on illicit tobacco smuggling.“We are being a lot more active with our overseas partners,” Mr Quaedvlieg said.“I have recently talked to my counterpart in Indonesia, the Director General of Customs and Excise. We talked about information sharing and operational activities.”
