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  1. January 27, 2010

    The Counterfeit Cops

    Private Investigators Fight a Hidden War Against Knock-off Cigarettes, Electronics, Toothpaste, and More

    The downstairs study was in shambles that morning, but the maid denied she’d been anywhere inside. A line of footprints muddied the wall surrounding the yard; still, as he stared groggily at the scene, Carl Risheim had trouble comprehending it. Read more

  2. June 28, 2009

    Terrorism and Tobacco

    Extremists, Insurgents Turn to Cigarette Smuggling

    For centuries, blue-turbaned nomadic Tuareg tribesmen have led caravans of camels across the expanses of the Sahara. Laden with millet and cloth from Africa’s West Coast, the caravans traveled unmarked paths to trade for salt and dates in Timbuktu, across the sand plains of Niger, and into the mountain oasis of the Algerian south. Read more

  3. June 28, 2009

    The Taliban and Tobacco

    Smuggled Cigarettes Give Boost To Pakistani Militants

    Tumman Khan is a poor, aging farmer who tills another man’s land in the restive northern tribal belt of Pakistan. For him and others in the Khyber Agency region, Sahib Ayub Afridi is considered an angel. The illiterate 70-year-old tribal leader finances construction of water pumps, streets and lighting, builds mosques and madrasahs, and supports the penniless and widowed. Read more

  4. June 28, 2009

    China’s Marlboro Country

    A Massive Underground Industry Makes China the World Leader in Counterfeit Cigarettes

    On first approach, Yunxiao seems like any other Chinese backwater caught in uneasy industrial transition. Faded advertisements line the streets downtown, where motorcyclists wearing bamboo-frond hats determinedly vie for passengers in a riot of honking. A cheerful red banner in the city center exhorts citizens to develop the local economy — and yet the message seems ironic. After all, since the 1990s, Yunxiao has already sprouted its own league of millionaires, famous throughout China. Read more

  5. June 28, 2009

    China’s Marlboro Country

    庞大的地下烟草产业使中国成为全球假烟巨头

    国际调查报道记者同盟.

    云霄给人的第一印象与其他在动荡的工业化转型期发展缓慢的中国乡镇没有太大的区别：城区街道两旁竖立着褪色的广告牌，在摩托车的轰鸣声中，戴着竹斗笠的摩托车主争先恐后忙着招揽过路的乘客。市中心有一条醒目的号召市民“大力发展地方经济”的红色标语——但这个信息似乎有些讽刺意味，从上世纪90年代开始，云霄已经出现了一批闻名全国的百万富翁。 Read more

  6. June 28, 2009

    Smuggling Made Easy

    Landlocked Paraguay Emerges as a Top Producer of Contraband Tobacco

    Guaíra sits on the edge of the sluggish, muddy, mile-wide Paraná River that cuts a natural border between Brazil and Paraguay. Here the soil is red, the terrain is flat with ample soybean and mate leaf plantations. On its face, Guaíra is a well-kept Western Brazilian city of 30,000. Men chatter among themselves sitting in small plazas and barber shops. The streets downtown are clean, the houses are freshly painted and pay phones are decorated with natural motifs — you can call from the gut of a fish or the chest of a parrot. Read more

  7. June 28, 2009

    El Gran ‘Duty Free’

    Paraguay es uno de los mayores productores mundiales de cigarrillos de contrabando

    Guaíra descansa a orillas del parsimonioso río Paraná que dibuja una frontera natural entre Brasil y Paraguay. Aquí la tierra es roja, el paisaje llano con amplias plantaciones de soja y yerba mate. A simple vista Guaíra es una prolija ciudad de 30.000 almas en el oeste de Brasil. La gente conversa sentada en plazas y peluquerías. Las calles del centro están limpias, las casas recién pintadas y los teléfonos públicos tienen diseños tropicales — se puede llamar desde el intestino de un pez o desde el pecho de un loro. Read more

  8. June 28, 2009

    When Cracking Down Seems Impossible

    Paraguay's Corruption Fuels a Criminal Economy

    Paraguay’s Customs chief, Carlos Rios, knew he would get a lot of heat from the tobacco industry, but he decided to move forward with the raid regardless. After all, he was part of a new administration that had pledged to end the country’s deeply rooted smuggling culture. So on February 6, 2009, Rios coordinated the largest cigarette bust in Paraguay’s history: 46 million "sticks," stored in a shabby, illegal warehouse located one block away from the border with Brazil, in the desolate area of Pindoty Porã. As officers burst onto the scene, seven cigarette-laden trucks idled, preparing to cross into Brazil. Police opened fire as one driver revved his engine and sped across the border. Read more

  9. June 28, 2009

    Ukraine’s ‘Lost’ Cigarettes Flood Europe

    Big Tobacco’s Overproduction Fuels $2 Billion Black Market

    The hang glider pilot insisted it was a routine flight, and that strong winds had blown him over the border from Hungary into Ukraine. But the man arrested by Ukrainian authorities last July, with his flight suit and night-vision gear, looked suspiciously like other hang-gliding smugglers along the border — smugglers who take off from Ukraine, fly into Hungary, and each drop as much as 100 cartons of contraband cigarettes. Read more

  10. June 01, 2009

    The Montenegro Connection

    Love, Tobacco, and the Mafia

    “My little cat … I’m going crazy without you …. You have repeatedly betrayed me, I think …. Little cat, when are you coming? ... I love you, little cat.” On Jan. 4, 2001, Dusanka Pesic Jeknic, representative of the Montenegrin trade mission in Milan, Italy, was speaking on the phone at her home in the southwest of the city. Milo Djukanovic, at that time president of Montenegro, was calling from the capital Podgorica. Billions of people around the world had just hailed the New Millennium. Dusanka, nicknamed “Duska,” the beautiful 41-year-old widow of the late foreign minister of Montenegro, was alone, far from her country. And she spoke out freely about everything: love, tobacco, and crime. Read more

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  2. June 28, 2009

    Tobacco, Terrorism, and Illicit Trade

    China, Paraguay, Ukraine: Inside the World's Top Smuggling Hubs

    Read more

  3. October 19, 2008

    The Secret Factory: Take an Undercover Tour of Baltic Tobacco

    Notorious as a haven for smugglers and money launderers, Kaliningrad, Russia, is not a place where it’s safe to ask… Read more

  4. October 19, 2008

    The Expert: Watch an interview With Luk Joossens

    Sociologist Luk Joossens is one of the world’s top experts on tobacco smuggling. In 1995, he co-authored a paper that… Read more

  5. October 19, 2008

    The Smuggler: Listen to Jorge Abraham

    Jorge Abraham was a tobacco smuggler from El Paso who masterminded the trafficking of as many as half a billion… Read more

  6. October 19, 2008

    The Expert: Listen to John Colledge

    In his more than 30 years in law enforcement, John W. Colledge investigated cigarette smuggling, narcotics, money laundering, and arms… Read more

  7. October 19, 2008

    The Undercover Cop: Listen to Ex-FBI Agent Tom Zyckowski

    Tom Zyckowski was one of four FBI agents who went undercover in parallel cigarette smuggling cases, Operation Royal Charm and… Read more

  8. October 19, 2008

    The Lawsuit: Read How Gallaher Smuggled

    Since a series of press exposés in 2000-2001 documented the tobacco industry’s extensive history of smuggling, the industry has seemingly… Read more

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