A blitz on cigarette smuggling promised
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• Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has promised to stop cigarette smuggling following an admission that it is costing the country £1.5bn a year in lost tax revenue.
An independent official will evaluate the problem and decide how to tackle it. This follows a number of recent attempts to control crossChannel smuggling.
Last April the Government announced a package of measures, including the confiscation of vehicles involved in smuggling cigarettes. In July it announced £35m of extra funding over three years, with 100 more Customs officers to be based at UK ports.
• Almost six-million cigarettes and 22 pallets of alcoholic drinks have been seized at Flosslare by Irish Customs officers. The cigarettes, with a £907,200 face value, were found behind pallets of lettuce in a 40ft container from Spain.
The cigarettes and alcohol would have been sold ille
gally in the Republic and Northern Ireland.
The Irish-registered arctic, valued at .£30,000, was seized; the driver, an Irishman in his forties, was questioned and then released.
Last month two English artics were seized in Rosslare with 22 pallets of gin, vodka and rum aboard.
The alcohol, which had boon brought in from Cherbourg, has a face value of £500,000; the trucks were valued at £120,000.
Two English drivers were questioned about the loads and their origins; the Director of Public Prosecutions has yet to decide whether to charge them.
• Customs estimates that 75% of the hand-rolling tobacco and some 10% of the manufactured cigarettes sold in the UK are smuggled.