It’s exploding traffic. Customs seized 402 tons of counterfeit cigarettes in 2021. This is a record level with an increase of more than 41% in one year. The direct consequence of the soaring price of the package, at 10 euros on average today. The parallel market has therefore never been so healthy. To verify this, we went near Roubaix where, according to estimates, nearly four out of ten cigarettes are bought either in Belgium or on the street, on the sly, where they are even cheaper. This is what Jean-Christophe does, a very heavy smoker – two packs a day – who receives the RSA: “You find them everywhere in the street. When you smoke a cigarette, they ask you if you don’t want to buy a cheaper cigarette. On average, it’s 4 to 5 euros. You make big savings. We know that they are less good, we don’t know what’s in them but we smoke them anyway.”
These counterfeit cigarettes take the highway between Belgium and France. An axis favored by traffickers where checks are nevertheless daily. “The last big seizure took place a week ago with a hundred kilos of cigarettes and tobacco found in a van to supply the Paris region”, explains Jean-Pierre Demassiet, divisional chief of customs in Halluin, in the North. Many Afghan, Pakistani and Iraqi refugees are used by these channels. “They are paid a hundred euros to transport contraband tobaccodevelops the divisional chief. These are people who are in precarious situations who need money. They send them back to their country of origin to help their families. There is also this aspect of exploitation of human misery behind this tobacco trade.”
These smuggled cigarettes are made in clandestine factories run by international criminal organizations, police said. In 2021, 73 sites were dismantled, mainly in Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland.
The cost of manufacturing a package is estimated at one euro for traffickers. Customs has a specialized laboratory in Marseille to dissect and analyze counterfeit cigarettes. Cigarettes where you can find everything, explains Corinne Cléostrate, Director of Legal Affairs and the Fight against Fraud for Customs: “We find lead and very heavy metals beyond the authorized standards. We find excrement of insects or rodents. In fact, tobacco represents a very small part. The objective for the organization is to make the maximum profit by investing very little in the raw material and by paying workers at very low cost.
“These are often illegal aliens who are destitute. They are recruited from hostels and find themselves working day and night in disused warehouses that have been converted into cigarette factories.”
Corinne Cleostrateat franceinfo
The model for these organizations is clearly cannabis trafficking. “They import into tobacco trafficking the same modus operandi, the same methods of intimidation, the same mafia-type recourse for the recruitment of employees, the organization of deliveries or the modes of transportexplains Corinne Cléostrate. We are starting to see settling of accounts in certain neighborhoods and cities that are linked to this traffic because there are significant financial issues at stake.
On the clandestine production sites, it is necessary to have a significant logistical organization, to make the packets of cigarettes explains the commissioner William Hippert, head of the Service of information, intelligence and strategic analysis on organized crime (Sirasco ): “We need industrial machines, which have a high price, and which must therefore be made profitable. We are therefore faced with sectors that have very good financial capacities. These international criminal groups then exploit small hands, the sellers at on the sly, to dispose of cigarettes resold at metro exits for example. But we must not only attack the bottom of the spectrum, the resellers, we must also be able to target the organizations that live from this crime. “
Proof of the recent increase in traffic, these clandestine factories are also setting up in France. A workshop was dismantled for the first time four months ago in a small town in Seine-et-Marne. And another production site was discovered in the town of La Longueville, near Maubeuge in March, with 42 tonnes of counterfeit cigarettes and tobacco seized.
What are the solutions to combat this traffic? Beyond customs seizures, a parliamentary report published in September 2021 proposes to create departmental committees to fight against tobacco trafficking and to put in place tools to better monitor the evolution of the parallel market than today. Another suggestion, strengthen the sanctions, because today, criminal groups know that they risk much less with tobacco trafficking than with drug trafficking. For the state, the financial stakes are enormous. Tax revenue linked to the sale of tobacco brought in 15 billion euros to the State in 2021. A sum donated to social security, but cigarette trafficking caused the loss of three billion euros over one year.