IRELAND
New figures show that illegal tobacco seizures in 2019 decreased by more than 75% as smugglers copied sophisticated techniques from the drug trade in an effort to avoid detection.
Revenue department figures revealed that just €10.5 million in cigarettes and other tobacco products were seized in 2019, compared to some €42.2 million in 2018. According to a spokesman for the revenue department, smugglers are using “increasingly inventive and complex smuggling methods and concealment techniques”.
Such methods include shifting away from the large-scale smuggling of tobacco products in shipping containers to smaller amounts of tobacco products being smuggled in sophisticated concealments traditionally associated with drug smuggling.
The smaller amounts of tobacco being smuggled has been evidenced by increasingly ingenious methods of concealment. A department spokesman said it is “alert to the resourcefulness of those involved in criminality in the supply of illicit tobacco products and responded effectively to this change in concealment methods."