Report: Cigarette Smuggling Funds Terrorist Groups

A new report by the U.S.-based Center for Public Integrity finds that cigarette and tobacco smuggling funds militant groups like the Taliban, the AFP reported June 29.

The report’s authors found that at least a half-dozen terrorist or militant groups rely on black-market tobacco and smuggling for revenue, including the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, left-wing FARC rebels in Colombia, the Real IRA in Northern Ireland, and a rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“We believe that tobacco has been second only to drugs as a source of finance to the Pakistani Taliban,” noted David Kaplan, editorial director of the Center for Public Integrity.

The report also found that an estimated 80 percent of counterfeit cigarettes in the European Union — and nearly all of those sold on streets in the United States — were among the estimated 400 billion made illegally in China every year.

The report, produced by the center’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, comes as 160 countries continued talks at the World Health Organization in Geneva on curbing the illicit tobacco trade.

In a related study (PDF), the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease estimated that about 11.6 percent of the global cigarette market is illegal causing governments to lose about $40 billion a year in tax revenue.