U.N. conference addresses illicit trafficking in tobacco

UNITED NATIONS -- Illegal sales and smuggling of the powerfully addictive narcotic earn billions for criminal syndicates, corrupt police and customs agencies, and claim thousands of lives every year.

In a new campaign to combat this trade, the United Nations and the U.S. government convened a conference of law enforcement experts from around the world this week, from New York City's police commissioner to a former Colombian Cabinet minister who is an expert on the lucrative contraband market.

The drug is not cocaine or heroin, but tobacco -- a far bigger business.

The world's biggest tobacco companies are witting accomplices in the illicit trade, producing and distributing huge quantities of cigarettes destined for the global black market, conference speakers charged.

About one-quarter of the cigarettes exported around the world ultimately are sold to consumers outside the legal and fiscal control of any government, depriving national treasuries of more than $20 billion yearly in tax revenue, according to U.N. and World Bank estimates. In the United States alone, the U.S. Treasury estimates, cigarette smuggling costs the federal and state governments $1.4 billion in lost revenue every year.

Laundering cocaine money

The illegal proceeds from this business help finance international arms rings and prostitution rackets -- and, increasingly, armed insurgents and terrorist organizations, according to police and prosecutors from the 145 countries participating in the U.N. conference. And drug gangs sometimes launder cash from cocaine and heroin sales by buying black market cigarettes, according to Latin American and East European experts.

"There is a great deal of money to be made in cigarette smuggling," said Raymond Kelly, New York City's police commissioner and a former chief of the U.S. Customs Service.

Representatives of major tobacco companies, who were invited to attend the conference, dispute the assertion that they knowingly supply the contraband trade. An international organization of duty-free airport shops also took issue with the accusation, contending that shipments of untaxed cigarettes are documented carefully by suppliers, retailers and monitoring governments.