Even if it is no longer talked about as it once was, the Cigarette smuggling is an ever-expanding phenomenon, with all the risks of the case: economic and image damage for the companies that produce the real ones and for the State which loses a share of tax revenue, but above all damage to the safety and health of the consumer, who is not protected in the face of a market historically managed by large criminal organizations and which, statistics in hand, is the fifth supplier of cigarettes at European level.
The most recent data is provided by Kpmg 2015 Report and they are unequivocal: in 2014, 56,6 billion illegal cigarettes were consumed in Europe, which represented 10,4% of total consumption, a percentage that halves considering only the Italian market (5,6% of total consumption) but which is no less worrying. In fact, in Italy the consumption of illicit tobacco products is grew last year by 20% compared to 2013 to reach 4,42 billion cigarettes: if the total volume of counterfeit or smuggled cigarettes consumed in the Boot had been purchased legally, additional tax revenues of approximately 770 million euros.
According to the Kpmg company report, one of the most alarming phenomena is that of “illicit whites” – i.e. cigarettes generally produced legally in countries outside the European Community, without therefore complying with European safety and quality standards (for example maximum levels in the content of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide or the use of fireproof paper for cigarettes , which self-extinguishes if not aspirated) – mainly intended for smuggling and therefore sold without paying taxes.
The "illicit whites" now represent more than half of the illicit products sold on the Italian territory. As for the type of crime, the epicenter remains Naples (where one out of three cigarettes sold is contraband) and the organizations are the usual suspects: Camorra in connection with criminal organizations from Eastern Europe (Ukraine in particular), organized crime from Puglia in connection with Balkan and Albanian "colleagues", and recent addition of the Chinese underworld.
What are the solutions? It is undisputed among insiders that to counter the phenomenon of illicit trade in tobacco products it is strong cooperation between all the institutions and operators involved is necessary and it is essential to implement advanced traceability systems, which go in the direction of dematerialisation and simplification and which are adequate to what is required by the Community Directive 2014/40/EU and the evolution of the phenomenon, which is increasingly complex to combat, above all by resorting to the tools of the past.
The crux remains that of the offer: the price of access to the illegal is in fact enormously lower than that of the legal market, with an average price differential of around 22 euros for the carton, and 2,2 euros for the 20 pack cigarettes. Without taking into account the flexibility of this market which also sells "in promotion" if you buy cartons and not packets: in Naples you get to pay 20 euros for a pack of 1,60 cigarettes, buying a carton of 10 packets for 16 euros.
Ma it is not by lowering the prices of legal products that the problem is solved. First of all because it has been demonstrated that from the end of 2013 to today, the incidence of the offense has grown in line with the growth of the low-price market segment, clearly highlighting how a relationship between the two phenomena is not significant. Furthermore, assuming that the legal operators, who pay the taxes, end up selling by renouncing the entire profit, the price per pack of 20 cigarettes it would still remain very far from the price of the illegal market: between 3,70 and 3,90 euros, more than two euros more than an illegal product worth 1,60 euros.
An attempt by the operators has also been made with the shredded market (loose tobacco): in the last few years alone, thanks to its more than affordable prices, this segment has grown 16 times, without, however, apparently managing to eradicate the black market. Acting on the consumer's purchasing power and on the shifting of consumption towards low prices is not decisive in the fight against illegality and in the recovery of volumes lost on the illegal market. All this has recently been confirmed by one study conducted by the IRCCS – “Mario Negri” Institute of Pharmacological Research in Milan, presented on the occasion of the conference "World No Tobacco Day", organized by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità on 29 May.
The analysis confirms that the illicit market is a market that depends on the availability of illicit products on the market and stresses, in particular, how the price of cigarettes has not been found to be a determining factor in illegal trade: in the tobacco market, neither tax evasion nor tax avoidance has grown, in Italy, in the period in which the real price of cigarettes (adjusted for inflation) rose. Ultimately, the study highlights how the distribution and production of illegal cigarettes, more than taxation, are clearly identifiable as the factors that most contribute to tax evasion in the sector.
If "contraband" cigarettes do not pay taxes in the country where they are sold to the final consumer, but pay them in the country where they are bought by the smuggler, with a price differential guided by the purchasing power of the various countries (average prices in pack of 20 cigarettes: Belarus € 0,70, Ukraine € 0,60, Russia € 0,90, or, on the borders of Italy, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Serbia from € 1,60 to € 1,90) the fight against crime can only be done by contrasting the logistics of the offer and not through fiscal interventions that drive a leveling of prices between countries.
