NORTH KOREA
A US security chief says the illegal tobacco trade is helping to prop up Kim Jong-un’s nuclear program as well as the world’s biggest terror groups.
David Luna, the outgoing chair of the OECD task force on countering illicit trade, says the North Korean regime accumulates most of its wealth through a network of “criminal enterprises that trade in everything from goods made by forced labor to counterfeit currency to narcotics.” The illicit tobacco trade is one of the most lucrative, being an industry worth tens of billions of dollars worldwide.
During his time as a senior security director for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Luna contributed to a 2015 report on how illicit tobacco “fuels transnational crime, corruption, and terrorism” and “creates greater insecurity and instability in many of today’s security ‘hot spots’ around the world.”
Luna also said that illicit tobacco was funding “bad actors”, with open source reports showing 15 of the world’s leading terrorist groups regularly rely on illicit cigarettes for funding, including al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, and Hamas.