Revenue moves to stamp out multi-million euro cigarette smuggling

NEW security measures have been put in place to combat increasingly sophisticated criminal gangs involved in cigarette smuggling.

The Revenue introduced a new Irish tax stamp for cigarettes last April after expert fake stamps were detected in major consignments of smuggled cigarettes last year.

“A new development in 2005 was the detection of bogus Irish tax stamps affixed to packets of cigarettes in two separate consignments,” said a Revenue spokesman yesterday. “The tax stamps in question were expertly reproduced,” he said.