This paper sets out to describe some of the findings of a cigarette case study, which was conducted as part of the research project Assessing Organised Crime in 2005 and 2006. It focuses on subjects involved in cigarette smuggling in the Netherlands. The 43 cases studied for this purpose may not provide a picture that is fully representative of the overall population of cigarette smugglers in the Netherlands. After all, studying customs files inherently implies a number of biases. Nevertheless, the findings presented in this paper provide a description of how cigarette trafficking is organised in various ways and by whom.

This paper focuses on the persons involved in cigarette trafficking, rather than how cigarettes are trafficked and from where to where. For a more detailed description of modus operandi, the use of corporate entities and cigarette trafficking geography, I refer to other studies based on the same research (Van Dijck, 2007; Van Dijck and Van Duyne, 2007).

Methodology

In the 43 cases of the file analysis, data was found on 272 ‘offenders’. These were either registered as suspects (verdachte) or designated as being criminally involved. Similar to findings of Van Duyne (2003) and Von Lampe (2007), who conducted an investigations into German cigarette trafficking, the case files and also the electronic seizure files contained many irregularities and omissions. As a result all-encompassing case descriptions were rather fragmentary. This impeaches the reliability of the data and the ability to make inferences. Interpretation of the underlying data, therefore, requires some caution. Conclusions are tentative and of descriptive rather than of quantitative nature.

Some figures on the cigarette black market in the Netherlands

The case files does only tell us something about the volumes handled in the cigarette black market at a micro-scale: only data on individual shipments is available. But since there is no empirical data indicating what the relative volume of the seized cigarettes is compared to the overall amount of illegally traded cigarettes, no macro-economic conclusions can be inferred from the data included in the files. However, at a micro-economic level, the data do tell us something about the scale of cigarette trafficking. Tables 4 and 5 provide some indication by the amount of cigarettes seized per case.

Offender population

Gender

Table 8 shows that 20 of 261 of the subjects involved were females, which amounts to 8%. This percentage seems not out of the ordinary, when compared to general crime statistics. Crime is an activity dominated by males. This view is supported by Van Duyne’s findings (3% female) and further reinforced when taking a closer look at the roles of the females: 5 of the 20 females involved were either the wife or (registered) partner of one of the male key suspects and played a subordinate role.

Age

In his 2003 investigation, Van Duyne observes a relative high average age of the offender population. This is partially explained by the fact that cigarette smuggling seems to attract a number of retired people who set up a small-scale trade for themselves and close friends, but ended up more ‘successfully’ than they had expected (Van Duyne 2003: 295). More or less similar cases were included in the studied files.

The offender population of 272 individuals contains only 2 offenders who were older than 65 at the time of the customs investigation (table 9). The relative high average age of almost 40 years (table 10) is largely accounted for by the high number of offenders between 41 and 65: 90 individuals, or 41%. These figures are roughly compatible with Van Duyne’s observations: mean age of 39 years, ranging from 19 to 74 and most offenders between 35 and 45 years (van Duyne, 2003).

We can only guess at the reason for the relative high average age, since we were unable to conduct interviews to ask the offenders when they stepped in and why. A partial explanation might be the low threshold of the cigarette black markets as such: there is little violence, relatively little risk of being caught and punished severely, and it is fairly easy to start up a small business of your own and make some profit. This might also attract more ‘settled’ gentlemen who wish not to endeavor in more violent crime scenes, such as the drug trafficking scene. The fact that cigarette trafficking is not seen as a morally abject activity (see also Antonopoulos, 2006) may provide further explanation.

Family ties

In another case, a son, who was a regular cigarette trafficker, appointed his father as his replacement to take care of the supply of various repeated customers while the son was on holiday. The father was so unlucky to be under customs observation when his son was enjoying his vacation. Customs found out about the son as well and both were prosecuted. In another case a son of a criminal jack-of-many-trades (who was also involved in drug trafficking) had set up, with the help and probably a significant capital investment of his father, his very own VAT fraud company. The father, for his part, did not refrain from abusing his son’s friendship relations and lured a rather naïve friend of his son into one of his malicious enterprises. The young entrepreneur, in his early twenties and eager to set his first steps in the free world of enterprise, was appointed only shareholder and manager of what was to become his very own business. Besides the business, which was all arranged for, his friend’s father also provided for a prêt-a-porter business plan: the import and export of empty CD and DVD cases. Even the buyers and suppliers were arranged for by the old man. The young and inexperienced business man obviously did not know the old adage that what is too good to be true is indeed not true. Customs figured out that the empty CD boxes served as a cover for illegal cigarette shipments into the United Kingdom. The shells had on a previous occasion (rather by accident) proven to be efficient X-ray blockers: Customs officers who once scanned the truck did not detect the cigarettes behind the CD shells. However, Customs got suspicious of the trading activities somehow and after a brief period of observation the father, the son and his friend were apprehended along with a number of other accomplices.

It was not possible to infer from the data included in the file an overall percentage of the offenders with partner and/or children, compared to those without partner or children. In the vast majority of cases this information was simply not included. In absolute terms, 22% (11 out of 50) suspects had no children, whereas of 32 of the 50 suspects of whom the marital status was known (64%), were married. ‘Married with children’ seems to apply to many, if not most offenders. There might be a connection with what offenders quite regularly admitted as their motive: the redemption of debts and to provide for a better life standard for the family.

Nationality

Cigarette trafficking, almost by definition, is a cross-border matter. Production facilities are often located in the Far East and in Eastern Europe and many of the cigarettes transported to and through the Netherlands are forwarded to other high-excise countries, such as the United Kingdom an Ireland (Van Dijck, 2007; Van Dijck in Van Duyne, 2007). Offender groups are often of a multi-national composition and the offender population is composite of many different nationalities: 24 in total (table 13). To avoid too long a list of numerous nationalities, only the ones of the highest frequency have been included; the rest is grouped according to region.

Again, the figures are roughly in line with the findings of Van Duyne (2003), with the exception of the occurrence of Middle East persons (20) and Central and East Europeans (6) in the case files, opposed to the entire absence of offenders from these regions in the files studied by Van Duyne.

As cigarette smuggling is a cross-border crime often involving transport by road, the prevalence of offenders of Belgian and German nationality do not need further explanation, especially not in the case of Belgian offenders, which are mostly of Flemish origin and who speak Dutch as their mother tongue. The number of 9 British offenders is easily explained by the fact that the United Kingdom and Ireland are topping the lists of countries of destination, mainly due to their high excise rates (Van Dijck and Van Duyne, 2007). On the other hand, the Netherlands and Belgium can be considered as two main transit countries for cigarettes to pass on their route to England. This, to some extend, reiterates the hypothesis, as put forward by Van Duyne (2003), of a Northern and a Southern trade belt, both running through Belgium and the Netherlands and finally ending up on the British Isle (Van Duyne, 2003). The high number of German and Polish offenders fit into the image of the Northern trading belt being the prevailing one (see also Von Lampe, 2007).

Another interesting result is the relative high number of ‘Middle-East’ nationalities, especially when compared with the country of residence. Of all 20 Middle East nationals, only 1 lived in the country of origin (Israel). Correlating results can be found in table 15, displaying the occurrence of double nationalities of offenders. Interpreting these data, one must keep in mind that since the 1980s, Turkish and Moroccan immigrants form the largest minorities in the Netherlands. The first wave of these immigrants were attracted by the availability of work. Nowadays Turkish and Moroccan communities in the Netherlands include a ‘second’ and ‘third’ generation.⁴

Employment situation

Only for half of all offenders information was available on their employment situation. Of 134 suspects about whom there was any information on employment, 110 (82%) were employed one way or another.

Although it is not uncommon in the Netherlands for criminal offenders to receive a social security allowance, one can also interpret the 6% of 134 offenders receiving such allowance as a reiteration of a sub-category of cigarette traffickers: small-time crooks, whether or not retired and in any case formally unemployed, seeking for some additional income to supplement their (meager) monthly allowance. However, the employment data does not corroborate the hypothesis that this is a significant sub-category, neither in number of offenders nor in respect of the volumes handled by these people.

Of 47 persons (representing 17% of the total offender population), some job description was provided. 55% of the offenders were truck drivers. Cigarette smuggling by truck drivers falls under the definition of occupational crime (Van de Bunt and Kleemans, 2007). Although truck drivers, similar to many other offenders, have the habit to deny any knowledge of and involvement in the cigarette trafficking (virtually always claiming that they are just hired to do the transport and were entirely oblivious to the true nature of their cargo), not many were able to uphold this view during the series of interviews conducted by Customs. One file mentioned a truck driver who was hired but got suspicious at a certain point. He timely withdrew himself. The smugglers were particularly unlucky: another driver they contracted had the wrong type of trailer and was not able to transport the container. The smugglers had to search for a third driver.

Trucks were also the main transport means of the largest case, in which 34 suspects were registered. The smuggling operation was large-scale (multiple millions of cigarettes per shipment over a longer period of time, perhaps even years). Five or more trucks with trailers drove in a convoy. Anticipating that primarily the first and the last vehicle in the convoy were apt to be checked by the customs, these contained nothing else but the cover load consisting of wooden beams. The trucks in the middle contained cigarettes stacked behind piles of wooden beams. Cigarettes were kept out of sight at several storage locations in the Netherlands, but the wooden beams were declared with the Belgian Customs prior to further shipment to the United Kingdom.

It would go too far to call the truck drivers key facilitators, although they often play a key part in any road transport smuggling scheme. In the world of cigarette trafficking key facilitators come in the form of former expedition officers and other people knowing how to handle the administrative burden of any import-export firm. The level of skill is not always what it should be: in at least one file the so-called expedition expert provided information that proved rather inadequate. The cigarette smuggling operation (exporting cigarettes to the United Kingdom via Malaysia) ran amok due to a quick response of the approached expedition form, which report their suspicions immediately to the police. The smugglers had made a rather clumsy attempt to export the cigarettes under the false header of ‘aluminum scrap’.

In one case a mechanical engineer designed and built a false roof construction for the top roof of a trailer. The hangar was equipped with a special lifting mechanism to lift the roof to get to the cigarettes. Likely the suspects assumed that neither the scanner nor the ‘sniffer’ dog (who stays at ground floor) would be able to detect the cigarettes.

‘Occupational crime’ is also the proper expression for the trafficking committed by two brothers who were the shared owners of an Amsterdam grocery for Spanish specialties. They dutifully paid excise in Spain where they bought original Spanish brand cigarettes (in fact their procurement consisted of a regular visit to a number of Spanish supermarkets) but they forgot to declare the cigarettes to the Netherlands Customs and to pay additional import and excise duties. A not-so-staggering amount of 4,600 cigarettes was seized, from the bookkeeping of the shop it was inferred that between 1993 and 2002 almost 31,000 euros of tobacco excise was evaded (which was part of a total calculated damage of more than 151,000 euros of overall tax evasion for these years). These are not huge amounts in terms of cigarette crime. Nevertheless it invokes the question whether the increasing turnover in cigarettes were the result of the increasing popularity of Spanish brand cigarettes or cheap prices of these cigarettes.

Involvement in other crime markets

In the files only very fragmentary mention was made of the criminal past of the suspects. This is partially the result of the pre-prosecution status of the examined files – the criminal history comes in play when the prosecution is preparing the case, but is not of primary concern for the investigating custom officers. All files, however, did mention what laws had been violated by the suspects, and that information gives some indication for involvement of the offenders in other crime markets.

Only in one case the traffickers were also involved in drug trafficking, making use of the same transport modes and cover activities (flower export). In another case the suspects were involved in music piracy as well. These findings are much in line with Van Duyne’s observation that little to no links exist between (Dutch) cigarette trafficking and other (organised) crime markets (Van Duyne, 2003).

Roles

Inter-group relations are mostly of a strictly commercial nature, sometimes with implicit acceptance of assumed rules for liability (‘who will bear the costs if anything goes wrong at a particular stage?’) and partially invoked by the allegedly violent reputation of the (foreign) suppliers. Similar to what Von Lampe (2007) observes for small-scale smuggling operations hierarchical ties are not very common in ‘groups’ involving up to five suspects. They mostly cooperate on a basis of reciprocity and mutual respect and this includes any actions and deliberation necessary to deal with the many, mostly practical issues that arise during an operation. Inter-offender relations within a group are of a combined commercial/social nature. Although the ‘helping hands’, who are often only involved in the laborious unpacking and repacking of the cigarettes, are paid by one of the organizers, the recruitment of these aides is often determined by pre-existing social networks of friends, acquaintances and relatives. This is often done by way of informal subcontracting: one accomplice gets paid and introduces one or two of his friends to the work, paying them from his own fee. These workers may not even be aware of the illicit nature or the contents of the boxes, although most of them did guess on the basis of the amount they got paid in relation to the work to be done and from the weight of the boxes. In one case involving the theft of four containers full of (brand) cigarettes, the three key organizers took care of the payment of a number of helping hands, not based on a formal agreement between the three, but rather as a result of who was acquainted with whom (see also Von Lampe, 2007). Examples of ‘organised bootlegging’, e.g. in which people are hired as ‘smurfers’ to bring small amounts of sleeves on a day-trip abroad back home, as described by Hornsby and Hobbs (2006), were not found in the Dutch files.

Offenders may have different roles dependent from whom they deal with (see also Von Lampe, 2007; Antonopoulos, 2007 forthcoming). A number of reccurring roles can be distinguished (see also Antonopoulos, 2006).

Accomplices, accounting for 27 percent of the offender population of 130, are either packers who help to repack the cigarettes (which for large volumes can be quite laborious) or simply a kind of personal assistant to the organizer. One in ten of all offenders were involved as chauffeur. The three specialist functions consist of one person providing substitute bolts to repair the container hinges (see the container theft case elsewhere described), one person operating a surveillance camera (in the same container theft case) and one person providing advisory with regard to the administrative burden of international trade.

Whereas a nominee director/owner knows and agrees to it that he is registered as a (decoy) owner and/or director of a legal entity, often after the acceptance of a small fee, the victims of identity theft are unaware that a cigarette smuggler is using their identity to put up a smoke screen against potential investigations by the authorities. In one case the individual of whom the identity was used, immigrated to the Middle East long ago and may possibly be no longer alive. Strangely enough the identity thief was not comfortable with the situation and discussed plans with his accomplice to set up a business under his own name.

Epilogue

Maarten van Dijck is Senior Advisor Intelligence & Analysis/FIU at ABN AMRO Bank NV. He wrote this paper in his capacity of (former) senior researcher in the service of Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

References

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Notes

1. This paper is based on a case file study of cigarette smuggling in the Netherlands as part of the research Project ‘Assessing Organised Crime’ (AOC). This project was funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme. The author would like to thank the officers of the Dutch Expertise Centre on Excise Fraud, in particular Ank Nieuwschepen and Marcel Joziasse, for their assistance in studying the case files, Ed van Lil for sharing his expertise with me, and the researchers of the AOC Research Consortium for exchanging findings of research of cigarette trafficking in 4 different European countries.
2. In this paper the expressions ‘smuggling’ and ‘trafficking’ are used as synonyms, both referring to the transport and distribution of contraband goods with the intention to conceal the goods from the eyes of the law enforcement authorities.
3. This department is a temporary joint venture of the Dutch Fiscal Police (FIOD-ECD) and the Customs (Douane), which both reside under the Dutch Inland Revenue Service (Belastingdienst).
4. Meaning that both the children (‘second generation’) and grand-children (‘third generation’) of these immigrants are born and raised in the Netherlands.