Customs seized more than 17 million packs of cigarettes

Customs seizes more than 17 million packs of unlabelled cigarettes

Over the past year, the number of tobacco products imported into Russia without mandatory labeling and therefore seized by customs has increased almost six times. But in the total volume of counterfeit cigarettes, this is about 1.5%

From January to November 2021, the Federal Customs Service seized or seized 17.4 million unmarked packs of cigarettes, almost six times more than in all of 2020 (3.1 million packs). Such data are contained in the report of the service based on the results of verification activities carried out by customs control units in cooperation with other regulatory authorities. The document, which RBC got acquainted with, was sent to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, its authenticity was confirmed by an employee of the press service of the Federal Customs Service.

As a result of verification activities and the arrest of counterfeit tobacco products in 2021, 486 administrative and 27 criminal cases were initiated. A year earlier, their number was 169 and ten, respectively.

The increase in the volume of seizures of illegal products from circulation in 2021 is typical not only for the Federal Customs Service, but also for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rospotrebnadzor, Roszdravnadzor, Rosselkhoznadzor, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Evtukhov told RBC.

The volume of seized products in 2021 can fill about 15 large trucks (each can fit 2-2.4 thousand boxes of 500 packs). However, on the scale of the shadow Russian tobacco market, this is a minimum. Customs in 2021 seized (or arrested) about 1-1.5% of the total number of illegal cigarettes, Sergey Glushkov, director of corporate relations and communications at the Russian office of JTI, calculated. At the same time, he proceeded from conservative estimates of the volume of the illegal market. The legal market in 2020 (data for 2021 is not yet available) was estimated at 219.1 billion packs, Philip Morris International indicated in its reporting.