Albanian Cigarette Smuggling Case Exposes Customs Service Complicity
Source: Balkan Insight
The market for illicit cigarettes in Europe is valued at 35 billion euros per year, with Ireland, Britain, France and Greece the main destinations, according to a report published by accounting services giant KPMG and paid for by tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris.
First founded in 1998, Albania Tabak Fabrika e Cigareve was bought by Ilir Jashari in 2010 for three million euros.
That year, Jashari was convicted of drug trafficking by an Italian court and served time behind bars. Ownership of Albania Tabak passed to his wife in 2011, and then his son, Darjo, from 2015.
Albania consumes an estimated 2.9 billion cigarettes per year, but under the Jasharis, Albania Tabak was not interested in the local market.
It registered with the custom authority as an ‘Active Production Regime’, a classification usually applied to shoes and clothing manufacturers that import raw materials tax-free on condition their final product is exported.
In 2014, however, the factory caught the eye of customs officials in Britain, who said it was behind the production of 22 million packs of the well-known Egyptian brand Cleopatra, with North Africa the final destination.
Albanian investigators followed up in 2015, suspended their inquiries the following year. In 2017, the case was reopened but made no progress.
The factory continued operating unimpeded.
Prosecutors now believe, however, that its contract with Dubai-based GM Inter Tobacco Fze was false.
“All the produce of this company between 2021 and 2023, supposedly with the final destination Cyprus, has been smuggled,” the court document seen by BIRN states.
“In five cases this was done by shipping it to Greece and declaring a non-existent destination, while in 30 other cases the final destination has been changed and the merchandise effectively discharged in the territory of Albania for the purpose of trafficking it to neighbouring countries.”
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