Electronic cigarette

The Greek state missed out on total taxes of 2.535 billion euros over the previous seven years (from 2008 to 2014) due to cigarette smuggling, according to an annual European survey on illegal tobacco trading by KPMG.

Last year alone cigarette smuggling grew by 2.8 percentage points of the market to account for 20.6 percent of domestic tobacco transactions.

Customs officials arrested a 30-year-old Armenian man at Piraeus port on Friday after discovering more than 1,230 cardboard boxes of contraband cigarettes in a shipping container that had arrived from China.

It could be a scene from a thriller: a ghost ship abandoned in the crystal-clear bay of a Greek island, its hold crammed with millions of illegal cigarettes, the crew nowhere to be seen.

And no one knows where the freighter Amaranthus or its cargo were bound for when it beached on the island of Zanthe off the Ionian coast of western Greece in December.

The Health Ministry is planning to introduce new measures and limitations on the use of tobacco in public places in Turkey, daily newspaper Sabah reported on Jan. 30.

Smoking is already banned in enclosed areas such as restaurants, cafes, bars and shopping malls, but a number of measures are planned on tobacco use as part of the National Tobacco Control Program 2015-2018.

The recent rise in fixed tax from cigarettes and alcohol over the inflation rate will encourage smuggling, the head of the Confederation of Turkish Craftsmen and Tradesmen (TESK) Bendevi Palandöken has said.

More than 22,000 retailers risk losing their license to sell cigarettes as the government’s new plan over tobacco use are impending.

One in 10 smoked cigarettes in the EU in 2013 was illegal, shows a survey of KPMG, quoted by Mediapool.bg.

In it took part the tobacco giants British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Philip Morris International. 

Members of the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE) confiscated over 1.3 million packs of contraband cigarettes in a warehouse located the area of Kalochori, near the northern port city of Thessaloniki on Tuesday, Greek police said in a statement on Wednesday.

A truck bearing Bulgarian plates and heating devices were also discovered in the warehouse, according to early reports.

A 57-year-old man was arrested in Thessaloniki on Sunday after being found in possession of 68,000 packets of contraband cigarettes.

The man was arrested as he loaded the cigarettes into his car. He had allegedly been selling them at open-air markets recently.