The Minister of Public Accounts, Thomas Cazenave, announced on Thursday before the congress of the Confederation of tobacconists a “new major operation” in the next six months, to fight against tobacco trafficking. “The fight against tobacco trafficking is an economic issue, a health issue, but also a security issue. I know your concerns in this area,” the minister told the audience of merchants gathered in Paris for two days of the conference. annual. “I asked customs to prepare a ‘Colbert 2′” after a first operation called Colbert carried out with customs, police and gendarmerie, from May 31 to June 6, he detailed.
Shortly before this announcement, Philippe Coy, president of the confederation of tobacconists, when mentioning this operation by Colbert, indicated: “We hope that this type of operations will be carried out more regularly so that the grip does not loosen.” Without wanting to give too many details about the future operation, Corinne Cléostrate, deputy director of customs responsible for the fight against fraud, recalled that operation Colbert 1 focused on all traffic points: “street sales points, shop controls, shishas , grocery stores, hairdressers”, as well as airports and was the reason for a “rare” border control operation.
Penalties for tobacco trafficking increase
In tobacco trafficking, “we are beginning to have criminal networks like those dealing with narcotics, because it is easier to traffic cigarettes,” acknowledged the director general of Customs, Isabelle Braun-Lemaire. The minister also announced that the Government will “implement new mobile scanners on port platforms next year” and will also “increase the number of teams of anti-smoking dog handlers by 25% until 2025.” He recalled that penalties for tobacco trafficking have been increased:
Furthermore, through the Fraud Evaluation Council installed a few days ago, the minister hopes that “customs will advance in the evaluation and analysis of the parallel market for tobacco products. We must have clear figures on the reality of the parallel tobacco market to establish We set ourselves ambitious objectives in the fight against smuggling. Finally, in terms of security in tobacconists, Thomas Cazenave proposed complementing the “Stop Traffic Tabac” application, used to report on traffic in tobacconists, “to turn it into a tool alert in case of security risk in their businesses”.
Asked by a tobacconist about the recent order of the Council of State to respect European legislation on the amount of tobacco authorized to be imported into France, the minister proposed “that we urgently work with the confederation (tobacconists) and that we imagine a series of measures to confront together this difficulty.
Source: BFM TV
