International pact sought on cigarette smuggling

Delegates from more than 150 countries met Monday to push for a wide-ranging pact to curb the booming trade in cigarette smuggling.

The week-long conference in Geneva is being held under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), which estimates 5 million people die each year from diseases related to smoking.

“Illicit trade in tobacco products contributes to the rise in tobacco consumption and poses a serious threat to health,” the WHO said.

By making cigarettes available at prices two to three times lower than in the shops, smugglers threaten to undermine global efforts to reduce smoking and save lives, WHO officials say.

Governments and police officials say that as well as putting huge amounts of cash into the pockets of dishonest businessmen, the large-scale business also helps finance organized crime.

The draft text under discussion this week—in the form of a protocol to the WHO’s 2004 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control which has been ratified by 157 countries—underlined this danger for global law and order.

The illegal cigarette trade, it says, “generates huge financial profits funding transnational criminal activity which penetrates, contaminates and corrupts government objectives and legitimate commercial and financial businesses at all levels.”

The U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists told a news briefing some cigarettes were now being manufactured in the former Soviet Union solely for smuggling, describing them as “the first ever designed-for-crime brand.”

ANTI-SMUGGLING PACT

A first round of discussions on the anti-smuggling pact in what is called an Intergovernmental Negotiating Body was held in February and another is due in 2009.

Officials hope a final text will be ready for approval in 2010 by all Framework Convention signatories.

The 34-page draft sets out principles for international cooperation between governments and law-enforcement agencies to crack down on producers who sell knowingly to smugglers, and calls for a licensing system for supply and distribution.

It would also have police and customs in signatory states keep close watch on border points and ports which the smugglers and their suppliers are suspected of using, as well as shops and markets where smuggled cigarettes are sold.

The draft, presented by conference chairman Ian Walton-Georges of the European Union’s anti-fraud office OLAF, would also have governments set up a “tracking and tracing system” for cigarettes and products used to make them.

It would ban the sale of cigarettes and equipment used to make them via the Internet, and oblige each signatory government to criminalize activities linked to the trade beyond its border and institute tough sentences for offenders.

By Robert Evans
GENEVA (Reuters)