The illicit trafficking of tobacco is a multibillion-dollar business, fueling organized crime and corruption, robbing governments of needed tax money, and spurring addiction to a deadly product.
In this investigation
Key findings
- Tobacco Underground is a project of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Working with reporters in more than a dozen countries, ICIJ is charting the frontlines of the illicit traffic in cigarettes.
- During 2000 and 2001, a team of reporters from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists broke a series of landmark stories exposing how leading tobacco companies worked with criminal networks to smuggle cigarettes around the world.
About this investigation
More articles
Notorious as a haven for smugglers and money launderers, Kaliningrad, Russia, is not a place where it’s safe to ask many questions.…
Notorious as a haven for smugglers and money launderers, Kaliningrad, Russia, is not a place where it’s safe to ask many questions.…
Notorious as a haven for smugglers and money launderers, Kaliningrad, Russia, is not a place where it’s safe to ask many questions.…
Sociologist Luk Joossens is one of the world’s top experts on tobacco smuggling. In 1995, he co-authored a paper that alerted the…
Video of 5e9ZBcSexyw December 17, 2009, 2:30 pm
Russian contraband cigarettes are ‘flooding’ Europe.
Tobacco Sales Take Off in Cyberspace.
How America’s Top Cigarette Firms Fueled a Billion-Dollar Underground Trade.
Indian tobacco factories, organized crime control a billion-dollar black market.
Montenegrins may have been surprised late last year to learn that the global financial crisis had arrived in their tiny Balkan country.…
Love, Tobacco, and the Mafia.
Big Tobacco’s Overproduction Fuels $2 Billion Black Market.
Paraguay’s Corruption Fuels a Criminal Economy.
庞大的地下烟草产业使中国成为全球假烟巨头 国际调查报道记者同盟.
Paraguay es uno de los mayores productores mundiales de cigarrillos de contrabando.
Landlocked Paraguay emerges as a top producer of contraband tobacco.
A massive underground industry makes China the world leader in counterfeit cigarettes.
Smuggled cigarettes give boost to Pakistani militants.
Inside Baltic Tobacco’s smuggling empire.
How an El Paso smuggler moved a half-billion cigarettes across America.
A tale of four FBI agents, 62 Chinese smugglers, and a billion bogus cigarettes.
How Gallaher stayed in the smuggling game.
Canada’s billion-dollar deal for Big Tobacco.
Tobacco Underground is a project of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Working with reporters in more than a dozen countries, ICIJ is…
The illicit trafficking of tobacco is a multibillion-dollar business, fueling organized crime and corruption, robbing governments of needed tax money, and spurring addiction to a deadly product.
Extremists and insurgents turn to cigarette smuggling.
Private investigators fight a hidden war against knock-off cigarettes, electronics, toothpaste, and more.
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