Edgware Road shopkeeper hid huge stash of black market tobacco and cigarettes behind fake wall
An Edgware Road newsagent stashed 97kg of tobacco and 92,000 black market cigarettes behind a fake wall to sell to customers and dodge about £35,000 in tax.Murtaba Alijanabi, 46, was foiled when Westminster City Council and HMRC sent sniffer dogs to his shop, Red Sea.
They found 91,160 cigarettes and nearly 82kg of Shisha tobacco behind the false wall, and returned the next day to find another 1,436 cigarettes and 15kg of tobacco.
Authorities cracking down on smuggling of contraband into jail
Two or three times per month, prisoners are caught smuggling contraband into the Cheatham County jail.According to investigators, tobacco, drugs and other items are being left outside the jail for work crews to sneak inside.Cheatham County law enforcement is cracking down. Its latest efforts were caught on tape.
http://wkrn.com/2015/09/15/authorities-cracking-down-on-smuggling-of-contraband-into-jail/
Lear MoreThink Twice Before You Buy These Beauty Products
Last month, we wrote a story titled “20 Surprising Beauty Buys You Can Find At Costco.” Soon after, we started receiving emails from brands we featured asking to be removed from the slideshow. They went a little something like this: “Hi love! Can you take us out of this slideshow? Costco isn’t an authorized retailer of ours. Thanks so much!” Several nearly identical messages later, those 20 surprising buys had been whittled down to six, and our Hm, something’s not right radar started to go off.
https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/think-twice-before-you-buy-these-beauty-products-128786024768.html
Lear More250m fake phones sold in Nigeria yearly –NCC
From Walter Ukaegbu, AbujaNEWLY appointed acting Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof.Umaru G. Danbata, has lamented that counterfeiting of ICT devices was beginning to create a huge economic problem affecting a wide range of products in the country.
Danbata who said that mobile phones are especially targeted, with some 250 million counterfeit sold annually, spoke during stakeholders meeting on “Combating Counterfeit and Substandard ICT Devices” in Abuja, last week.
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Mobile Devices Counterfeiting, Negatively Affects National IGR
The acting executive vice chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof Umar GarbaDanbatta, has said that mobile devices counterfeiting is negatively affecting the nations Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
Danbatta disclosed this at a one day stakeholders meeting on combating counterfeit and substandard ICT devices in Nigeria, yesterday in Abuja.
The NCC boss said that counterfeiting cheats the country of billions of naira in revenue that could have been raked in through taxes and duties.
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Stewardess jailed for tobacco smuggling
An air stewardess who repeatedly smuggled shisha tobacco into the UK from Dubai, evading more than £57,000 in excise duty, has been jailed for 18 months after she was investigated by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
Jade Kaur, from Stretford, was caught with 25kg of non-UK duty paid shisha tobacco and 3,200 cigarettes in her luggage when stopped by Border Force officers after landing at Manchester Airport in November last year.
The 27-year-old was arrested and the HMRC investigation uncovered messages on her mobile phone that proved she had carried out at least a dozen similar long-haul trips while off duty.
Kaur owned up to illegally bringing 275kg of shisha into the UK between July 2014 and see more at :
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Food: counterfeiting cost 4bln a year
SEPTEMBER 9 – Each year fake food products and tobacco smuggling cost the legal market four billion euros and over 20,000 jobs in Italy, according to Confagricoltura. The alarm was raised at a congress organized at Milan Expo 2015 together with the Open foundation.
”Buying counterfeited or smuggled products means not only consuming things that can damage health, but also causing economic damage to the country in terms of loss of revenue and employment, as well as to the productive system in general”.
Lear MoreIllicit tobacco trade flourishing in Canterbury-Bankstown, where there are higher than average smoking rates
THE Canterbury-Bankstown area is a hotspot for the illegal tobacco trade because smoking rates are higher in lower socio-economic areas.
The tobacco industry says the latest 12.5 per cent tobacco excise increase will only fuel the growth of black market trade.
But Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash has described the claims as “scaremongering by cigarette giants”.
Lear MoreIndia’s counterfeit market grows
Counterfeit and smuggled products account for over one fifth of India’s FMCG market according to a study which says sales of fake goods are growing at a faster rate than the overall market.
A report from industry body FICCI and consultancy firm KPMG said that the counterfeit market was increasing at 44% a year, around four times the speed of the FMCG market; it was estimated to be worth some Rs 1.05 lakh crore in 2014.
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Cigarette haul worth £500,000 intercepted by HMRC officers
Two men from Hounslow have been arrested on suspicion of smuggling £500,000 worth of cigarettes concealed in washing machines. The men, aged 38 and 41, were arrested on Friday (September 4) following a tobacco smuggling operation by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
A third man, aged 46 and from Poland, has also been arrested.
Officers from HMRC seized 2.5m cigarette cartons, which had arrived from Poland, from a self-storage unit in Twickenham.
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