Buying cheap spirits ‘supports criminals’

PEOPLE buying cheap cigarettes and spirits from street sellers or door-to-door salesmen are most likely to be supporting organised criminal groups, customs officers warned yesterday.

Consumers of such products are also subjecting themselves to possible health risks as none of the spirits or cigarettes are subject to any kind of quality control.

Figures released by customs show that, to date, there have been:

15,497 seizures of cigarettes, amounting to 49m cigarettes, with a potential value in lost revenue of €15.5m;

117 seizures of spirits, amounting to 2,458 litres, valued at around €87,900;

29 seizures of wine, amounting to 27,400 litres, with a potential lost value of around €327,000.

“If you choose to buy cheap cigarettes and spirits from street sellers/door-to-door salespersons, you must realise that there is a high possibility that you are buying counterfeit products, which provide an unknown set of ‘health’ risks as the product is not the subject of quality control,” said Ursula O’Neill of Customs Investigations.

“Your actions are not just contributing to the black economy relating to tax evasion (monies which could be put towards funding schools and hospitals) and undermining legitimate businesses in your neighbourhood, you are in essence supporting the racketeering activities of organised crime groups, controlled by serious criminals who operate at the top of the crime chain, often involved in other criminal activities, including drug distribution and money laundering.”

The biggest trend in cigarette smuggling in the last two years has been the emergence of so-called “ant smuggling” from the Baltic States.

Customs are now making an average of 1,300 seizures of cigarettes each month, most of it at Dublin Airport and most of taken from flights from Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.

Ms O’Neill said in one case, a few weeks ago, 15 passengers on a flight from Riga, the capital of Latvia, had the same booking information/itinerary and were due to return back to Riga the following morning.

All 15 were searched, which took four hours to do, and a total of 250,000 cigarettes were seized.

She said this case was “not usual” and said it highlighted the level of organisation behind the smuggling.

In another case, a house in Dublin was raided following a large haul of cigarettes and a Lithuanian man was arrested. When customs entered the house they found more than 14 fellow Lithuanians who were being used as couriers.

Ms O’Neill said there was now a pattern of couriers landing in Cork, travelling up the Dublin, and flying out the following morning.

Ms O’Neill said that at a recent meeting of the EU anti-fraud office, OLAF, all high-tax countries, including Germany and France, were raising the problem of “ant smuggling.”

While customs are seeing less of the large maritime cigarette hauls, there were still a number of such seizures in 2006.

She said that following changes in the law in 2005, customs officers were now empowered to seize cash which they suspect is linked to any form of criminal activity, including cigarette smuggling.

This extended the powers of customs who up until then were only able to seize cash which they suspected was linked to drugs.