TEHRAN: Chief of Iranian task force to combat smuggling, Habibollah Haghighi, said during a meeting in Qom among seminary heads, up to $25 billion worth of contraband was smuggled into the country last year which had negative impacts on the economic, health care, medical and cultural sectors. The amount of contraband over the year was double of the country’s development budgets.
Iran’s Central Task Force to Combat the Smuggling of Commodities and Currency, formed by direct order of the supreme leader, is affiliated with the Presidential Office, with the task force head serving as the president’s special representative. On July 3, 2002, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued an order establishing the office, stating: “Growth of trafficking and its harmful impacts on manufacturing, legal trade, investment and employment is a serious and significant danger that should be fought with full force. All relevant departments are obliged to play their role in this combat.”
Hamid Zangeneh, an economics professor at Widener University, told Al-Monitor that Iran’s high inflation rates and unemployment were the main reasons for the growth of smuggling. He said, “Another very sobering root cause of smuggling is the prohibition of many products in the market. Large bulks of these smuggled commodities are those that cannot be produced or purchased in the free market, such as alcoholic beverages, films, medicine and, most importantly, drugs.”
Haghighi had previously reported on Iran’s smuggling problem back in December 2014, thus highlighting how President Hassan Rouhani’s administration is attempting to raise awareness of the issue through the media and seeking collaboration with powerful organizations like the judiciary and the police force.
According to official statistics, commodities such as cigarettes, cellphones, alcoholic beverages, cosmetics, satellite receivers and medicine are the top illegal imports.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration announced that of Iran’s annual $11 billion in cigarette imports, 25%, or $3.6 billion, is smuggled into the country. Drug trafficking is estimated to be worth $3 billion.
Ebrahim Dorosti, deputy of Iran’s Chamber of Trade Unions, reported that illegal cellphone imports total $2 billion. According to Dorosti, 85% of cellphones are illegally imported to Iran, amounting to $200 million worth of losses for Iran’s government.
