Tobacco terror link

ORGANISED crime syndicates trafficking drugs like ice and cocaine are now smuggling tobacco leaf and cigarettes and funnelling the cash back to terrorist groups.

With government taxes on tobacco set to rise again in the Federal Budget, black market tobacco leaf and cigarettes are now as profitable as narcotics.

And such is the “low risk high return” market, federal law enforcement agencies now have credible evidence that monies from tobacco trafficking are supporting terrorist groups in the Middle East.

Lead national crime fighting agency Australian Border Force intelligence has flagged a noticeable shift in the pattern of trafficking of tobacco, which is rising exponentially in ordinary postal mail alone by 10 to 15 per cent every year.

According to figures obtained by News Corp Australia, in January last year 3.6 million sticks of cigarettes and 435kg of loose leaf tobacco was intercepted at the nation’s main foreign parcel receiving facility in Sydney.

But this January, the latest monthly figure available, five million sticks and more than one tonne of loose leaf was intercepted.

The difference has been the emergence of serious organised crime groups, as opposed to opportunists, taking over the trade almost in entirety.

“We are seeing the exporters using the methodologies we would normally see with drugs,” an ABF officer said.

Most of the illicit cigarettes come from South Korea, Japan, China and Hong Kong, while loose leaf is mostly from Indonesia and the Middle East.

Now Australia’s multiagency counter terrorism agents have been warned by overseas counterparts that the tobacco smuggling industry is being taken over by terrorist networks. Suspected groups include Colombian militant group FARC, who traditionally have been involved almost exclusively just in cocaine production.

Australian authorities also have intelligence of targets here believed to be in the tobacco smuggling trade and sympathetic and or indirectly linked to the Islamic extremist cause of Hezbollah and ISIS.

Trafficking is expected to rise as the Budget will push the average cost of a packet of cigarettes up to almost $ 40, making Australian cigarettes the most expensive in the world.