The Minister of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, will present on Monday a new three-year plan (2023-2025) aimed at reinforcing the fight against illicit tobacco trafficking, a phenomenon that he himself acknowledges is in full “explosion” in France. According to statistics published by customs, more than 284 tons of contraband tobacco were seized in 2020, 402 tons in 2021, and already more than 600 tons, including more than two-thirds of cigarettes, in the first ten months of 2022.
The authorities’ plan “intends to adapt the customs response to the unprecedented scale that the parallel tobacco market has taken,” explains Gabriel Attal in a document obtained by AFP on Saturday. Among other key measures, it provides for the deployment of a dozen vans equipped with X-ray scanners capable of screening a vehicle in sixty seconds, for an amount of 45 million euros, details this document.
This plan also announces the formation, on a model tested in Lyon, of tobacco anti-trafficking groups “capable of carrying out drilling operations and investigations” in the nine main identified smuggling areas of the country. A “cybertabac” network will also be set up to track traffic on the Internet or social networks, and work will be done on the development of “scientific customs” tools that make it possible to trace the origin of contraband tobacco, to better determine trafficking routes.
“Stop the headlong run of the parallel market by 2025”
Gabriel Attal finally indicates the opening of a reflection, with his colleague Guardian of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti, with a view to “strengthening criminal sanctions” against buyers, sellers and manufacturers of contraband tobacco. “I set myself a clear objective for customs, to stop the fallout of the parallel market by 2025,” concludes the minister.
Proof of the vitality of traffic, customs discovered in December 2021 and last September in the same town of Poincy (Seine-et-Marne) two “factories” for the clandestine manufacture of cigarettes, the first to be dismantled in France . Tobacco smuggling “begins to take on the aspects of drug trafficking,” said the head of the Customs Intelligence Directorate (DNRED), Florian Colas.
“Criminal organizations are using any means to move the product,” he added, citing “roads, express and postal freight, orders on social networks, flows of heavily loaded containers, tobacco from ‘mules’ that saturate theft and clandestine factories.” . The Minister of Public Accounts plans to unveil on Monday the 2023-2025 plan in the Eastern Pyrenees, one of the favorite routes for tobacco smuggling bound for France.
Source: BFM TV
