DAZ DISCOVERY

This manhole cover (left) concealed one of the more basic hiding places, but many are much larger and more sophisticated.

“We have had single seizures in excess of 100,000 cigarettes and have visited some shops three times in the same day only to find they have re-stocked with illicit tobacco,” said Allan Harwood, Coventry City Council’s Trading Standards and Consumer Protection Manager. Seemingly innocent products are common hiding places for black market fags. In Southend, Essex, smuggled cigarettes were stashed inside boxes of M&M chocolates. Trading Standards officers in Coventry found them in boxes of Daz washing powder (top), while raids in Glasgow this month unearthed a haul worth £24,000, some hidden in crates of soft drinks (above). That wasn’t enough to fool Dixie the springer spaniel, however. “She’s an experienced hand after eight years of working in consumer protection in Scotland,” said Neil Coltart, head of Glasgow Trading Standards. Raids in Nottingham revealed cigarettes that had been hidden in disposable barbecues. “The hides are ingenious,” said the city’s Trading Standards service manager Jane Bailey. “They have hidden it behind toilet systems where you have to move the toilet and the wall. We have had them in doors, between the wood in the frame. “We have had false walls built where there is a whole other room full of it.”