Greece working to reduce flow of smuggled cigarettes
21/01/2014
High taxes and austerity make Greeks turn to smuggled cigarettes at half the price.
By Andy Dabilis for Southeast European Times in Athens — 21/01/14
 A woman purchases cigarettes in the Athens central market area. [AFP]
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The Greek government continues to tax tobacco products as part of the austerity measures demanded by international lenders while simultaneously trying to stop the growing trade in illegal cigarettes that threatens revenues.
Cigarettes are a prized commodity in Greece. Forty percent of the population smokes, which is the highest rate in Europe and one of the highest in the world.
The government raised the tobacco tax by more than 20 percent since the economic crisis began in 2009 and recently announced another 5 cents tax per cigarette pack.
Austerity-stricken Greeks are responding by increasingly turning to illegal cigarettes that usually are half the price of those sold at retail.
The government estimated it is losing about 700 million euros annually to the illegal cigarettes trade. The finance ministry said tobacco revenues decreased by 11 percent in the last two years, down to 2.7 billion euros.
Ilias Asimakopoulos, chief executive of JT International Hellas, the second-biggest tobacco company in Greece, said the illegal cigarette market has grown to more than one-fifth of the local cigarette market.
“Some 4.7 billion illegal cigarettes enter the Greek market every year,” Asimakopoulos said.
Experts said the government is in an unenviable position to raise revenues and combat cigarette smuggling.
The trade is so huge and the attempts to stop it are ridden with so many obstacles that they are seemingly futile, said Haralambos Tsardinidis, an economist at the Institute for International Economic Relations in Athens.
“The government tries to control the illegal cigarettes trade but there is too much corruption in the tax offices,” Tsardinidis told SETimes.
In response, authorities have made additional efforts to identify corrupt officers as part of attempts to break the illegal supply chains.
A special officer in the Attica police department was suspended on suspicion of participating in a criminal gang smuggling contraband cigarettes. The case involved 30 suspects, 27 of which were arrested in Laconia and Attica, including two coast guard officers charged with helping smugglers.
Moreover, authorities continue to interdict smugglers with large cigarette batches. Last year, the Greek coast guard intercepted 200,000 packs of cigarettes, while customs officials confiscated nearly 2 million packs in the port of Piraeus alone, worth more than 6 million euros.
“The problem of street vendors is strongly related to illegal immigration and its management is a political issue,” Effi Lambropoulou, a criminologist at Panteion University in Athens, told SETimes.
Lambropoulou said the financial police have said they do not have jurisdiction in contraband goods.
“[But] the contraband has all the characteristics of organised crime, which is the responsibility of the financial police,” she added.
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http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2014/01/21/feature-02
Nov. 17 Leader Says Gov’t, CIA & EYP To Blame for Xiros’ Escape
The alleged leader of the notorious November 17 terrorist group, Alexandros Giotopoulos, on Tuesday blamed authorities over the escape and/or disappearance of November 17 convicted murderer/terrorist Christodoulos Xiros. Giotopoulos, who is serving 17 life terms plus 25 years for apparently masterminding 17 murders, a plethora of bombings, robberies as well as other crimes, said that intelligence agencies such as Greece’s EYP, the CIA and other authorities did nothing to prevent this from happening.
In a letter, that was published in the Tuesday edition of the Eleftherotypia paper, Giotopoulos said that authorities did “nothing” to prevent the escape of Xiros.
“So, all those guys in the counter terrorism unit, EYP (Greek National Intelligence Service), the government and the CIA didn’t know that Christodoulos had taken six permits (for leave) in 18 months? What did they do to prevent his disappearance? Nothing,” said Giotopoulos.
He claimed that when another convicted member of the group, Vasilis Tzortzatos, was released on leave, six cars with officers from the counter terrorism monitored his every move but no such force was dispatched to shadow Xiros.
Giotopoulos also questioned why Xiros received a prison leave, especially after setting fire to his cell in 2011. According to the article in Eleftherotypia, Xiros received permission to visit senior prison wardens after that incident, as well as members of the Conspiracy of Fire Cells Conspiracy guerrilla group, and even hardcore criminals.
“Who gave the order? Certainly not not director or the prison warden. They have no such power, nor would they assume such responsibility. The order came from above. From the counter terrorism unit, EYP and, thus, from the government that supervises them,” he stated.
“So let’s not try to blame the guards who were simply executing orders. Those responsible are the ministers who are now howling and screaming with hypocrisy, while the situation suits them. They’ve stopped issuing permits during the short time of the (Greece’s EU) presidency and are preparing to effectively abolish them afterwards.”
In the letter, Giotopoulos also questioned why an ghost fingerprint that was allegedly discovered in a hideout in his partner’s home on the island of Lipsi in 2002 was never matched.
“Twelve years later” he said, “they have found nothing. Which means that there was no fingerprint. This was a fabrication against me either by the counter terrorism unit or EYP. And instead of staying quiet, they are now using the TV channels to show … that there are fugitive members N17.”
It should be reminded that Xiros failed to return from prison leave earlier this month. On Monday Xiros reappeared after releasing a shocking video on (the Soros-backed) Indymedia website, vowing to wage an armed campaign against those he claims are destroying Greece.
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