Exposed: How billions of cigarettes end up on black markets
Major tobacco multinationals implicated in cigarette smuggling, tax evasion, documents show.
How Clarke defended company
BAT's Kenneth Clarke was called before the Commons all-party health committee, chaired by Labour MP David Hinchliffe, after the original disclosure that BAT stood accused of complicity in cigarette smuggling.
The multi-million dollar trade route
When Kenneth Clarke formally became deputy chairman of British American Tobacco in 1998, the documents that have now surfaced suggest that - unknown to him - one of the firm's exclusive distributors, Romar Freezone Trading, was smuggling at least $12m worth of cigarettes a month into Latin America from Aruba, the tiny Dutch dependency off the Venezuelan coast.
Whistleblower who asked too many questions faced company's wrath
He was sacked at the end of 1999. In the ensuing row, the company, Romar Freezone Trading, accused him of incompetence, fraud, alcoholism and blackmail. Attempts were made to threaten him and, he says, to set him up on assault or drugs possession charges.
Clarke company faces new smuggling claims
Kenneth Clarke, currently embroiled in an increasingly acrimonious bid for the Tory leadership, today faces a major embarrassment through his boardroom connection with the cigarette manufacturer British American Tobacco.
Global illicit cigarette trade: What’s next?
The proliferation of tobacco smuggling is so widespread that it is sometimes hard to distinguish between criminal organizations, which do the actual smuggling, and the manufacturers who feed it and often oversee it.
The U.S. rises as a transit point for contraband cigarettes
In his statement to Congress in March 2000, the head of U.S. Customs — a former Marine and New York City cop who rose to the rank of police commissioner before turning to federal and international law enforcement — alerted lawmakers to a new and alarming problem. There had been a "dramatic increase" in the number of cigarette imports to the United States, starting roughly in the last half of 1999.
Cyprus: Big Tobacco’s favorite smuggling hub into the UK
On August 28, 2000, a ship owned by Greek Cypriot Christos Tornaritis attempted to ram a patrol boat of armed customs officers off the coast of Crete. The officers had tracked the 1,542-ton Cambodian-registered freighter from the Cyprus port of Limassol to Port Said, Egypt. It was now bound for Latvia. The officers seized the "Marina" and discovered 7 million packs of British-made cigarettes on board, brands normally smoked only in the United Kingdom.
Africa: Disguising BAT’s involvement in cigarette smuggling
Letters discovered in BAT's archives in Guildford, England, are some of the most explicit pieces of evidence of the company's involvement in cigarette smuggling, in this case in central Africa.
In Latin America, Big Tobacco partners with money launderers, smugglers
Twenty miles off the northern coast of Venezuela lies a tiny, sunbaked island called Aruba. Like so many self-governing Caribbean islands that cling to the coast of the Americas, it has been a smugglers' paradise since colonial times. For decades, it also has been a linchpin in an illegal tobacco trade that Colombian authorities claim comprised as much as 90 percent of cigarettes sent into Colombia.
Philip Morris’ Mafia connections
The killing of two Guardia di Finanza agents in Brindisi, Italy, reflects the powerful underworld interests involved in tobacco smuggling into Italy.
Canada’s cigarette smuggling corridor
Dino Bravo, a former World Wrestling Federation wrestler and mob enforcer, was sitting in his leather recliner, programming his new VCR on March 12, 1993, when two men walked into his luxury home just north of Montreal and shot him seven times in the head. Police later found in his home stacks of cash and documents related to the cigarette smuggling business.
BAT finds a partner in Asia’s most notorious criminal organization
The Chinese consume almost one out of every three cigarettes manufactured worldwide, or 1.6 trillion out of about 5.2 trillion cigarettes consumed annually. And their consumption grows about 2 percent each year. It's no wonder, then, that in the early 1990s British American Tobacco considered China "key to BATCo's longterm success," according to an internal company document.
Tobacco companies linked to criminal organizations in lucrative cigarette smuggling
A year-long investigation by the ICIJ shows that tobacco company officials at BAT, Philip Morris, and R.J. Reynolds have worked closely with companies and individuals directly connected to organized crime in Hong Kong, Canada, Colombia, Italy and the United States.
Tobacco firms used suspected drug traffickers, EU lawsuit claims
A European Union lawsuit against two major U.S. tobacco companies says RJR Nabisco had dealings with suspected narcotics traffickers in Spain and money-laundering suspects in the Caribbean, and claims that smuggling activities by Philip Morris "have enabled drug lords to launder their illicit profits."
U.K. considering formal investigation into cigarette smuggling
The British government is considering launching an in-depth investigation into "extremely serious" allegations of international tobacco smuggling by giant tobacco multinational BAT (British American Tobacco).
Philip Morris accused of smuggling, money-laundering conspiracy in racketeering lawsuit
Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco multinational, has engaged in smuggling and drug-money laundering for years in a scheme to avoid taxes and boost sales of its cigarettes, according to allegations in a new racketeering lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court.
Global reach of tobacco company's involvement in cigarette smuggling exposed in company papers
In its search to maintain and enlarge cigarette markets and corporate revenue, British American Tobacco exploited a sophisticated network of smuggling routes throughout Asia.