Tobacco trafficking: the government announces a “new major operation”

The Minister of Public Accounts Thomas Cazenave announced Thursday before the congress of the Confederation of tobacconists a “new major strike operation” in the next six months, to fight against tobacco trafficking.

“Fighting against tobacco trafficking is an economic issue, a health issue, but also a security issue. I know your concerns in this area,” said the minister in front of the audience of traders gathered in Paris for two days of annual congress. “I asked customs to prepare a Colbert 2” after a first operation called Colbert carried out with customs, police and gendarmerie, from May 31 to June 6, he detailed. “Let me give you some figures which allow us to take stock of this operation. Over one week, this represents 5,200 agents mobilized, including 2,900 customs officers, 1,200 findings and 58 arrests, nearly 9 tons of tobacco seized.

Shortly before this announcement, Philippe Coy, the president of the Confederation of tobacconists, mentioning this Colbert operation, indicated: “We are waiting for this type of operation to take place more regularly so that the grip does not loosen.” Without wanting to give too many details on the future operation, Corinne Cléostrate, deputy director at customs responsible for the fight against fraud, recalled that Operation Colbert 1 had targeted all trafficking points, “street sales points , checks on businesses, shisha bars, grocery stores, hair salons”, as well as airports and was the occasion for a “rare” border filtering operation. In tobacco trafficking, “we are starting to have criminal networks such as narcotics, because it is easier to traffic cigarettes,” admitted the Director General of Customs Isabelle Braun-Lemaire.

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The minister also announced that the government would next year “deploy new mobile scanners on port platforms” and also “increase the number of teams of anti-smoking dog handlers by 25% by 2025”. He recalled that the penalties for tobacco trafficking had been increased: “We have thus increased from 1 to 3 years the prison sentence incurred for the fraudulent manufacture or possession with a view to the sale of tobacco. This penalty is increased to 5 or 10 years when these offenses are committed by an organized gang. Furthermore, through the Fraud Evaluation Council installed a few days ago, the minister hopes that “customs will move forward in the evaluation and analysis of the parallel market for tobacco products. We must have clear figures on the reality of the parallel tobacco market to set ourselves ambitious objectives in the fight against smuggling.

Finally, in terms of tobacco shop security, Thomas Cazenave suggested that the “Stop Traffic Tabac” application, used to report information on traffic by tobacconists, be supplemented “to make it an alert tool in case of security risk in your businesses. Asked by a tobacconist about the recent injunction from the Council of State to comply with European legislation on the quantity of tobacco authorized for importation into France, the minister proposed “that urgently, we work with the confederation ( tobacconists) and that we imagine a series of measures to tackle this difficulty together.