Smoke and Mirrors: The Balkan Hub of a Global Cigarette Scam

In the nineties, illegal cigarette shipments used to leave Montenegro's port of Bar by speedboat, darting across the Strait of Otranto into the waiting arms of the Italian mafia.

The barely-concealed trade, permitted by the state as a financial lifeline amid war and sanctions, turned the tiny Adriatic republic into a byword for organised crime. But by the turn of the century, Montenegro insisted it had kicked the habit.

Fast-forward two decades, and an in-depth investigation by Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, ARIJ, reveals the smugglers are back, and Montenegro is giving them cover.

The speedboats have been replaced by fishing vessels 'ghosting' around the Mediterranean; the suspected smugglers and counterfeiters hide behind shell companies and faked papers, find haven in the port of Bar and rub shoulders with the politically powerful; they have a willing accomplice in lawless Libya.

Up and down the Balkans, there are bit-parts for state-owned and private factories and politically-connected businessmen in Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo and Greece, in a suspected counterfeit and contraband cigarette business that has netted vast profits  and cost countless countries untold sums in lost tax revenues.

One of the biggest markets in Europe for illegal cigarettes, Britain has taken a lead role in trying to stem the trade. Renewed scrutiny of the region's record on organised crime may have ramifications for its European Union membership ambitions.

Montenegro joined NATO last year and is a contender to become the next member of the EU, yet the country of 620,000 people has been run by the same party for 30 years and, effectively, the same man, the immensely...