“I want to hit hard”.
It is with these words that the Minister of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, mentioned in the Sunday newspaper his new plan intended to strengthen the fight against illicit tobacco trafficking.
A phenomenon of his own admission in full "explosion" in France.
His plan spanning from 2023 to 2025 is to be presented Monday in the Pyrénées-Orientales, one of the favorite routes for smuggled tobacco bound for France.
The stated ambition?
“Dry up traffic and harass traffickers,” he insisted.
In this sense, the Minister in charge of Customs plans to deploy a dozen vans equipped with X-ray scanners capable of sifting through a vehicle in sixty seconds, for an amount of 45 million euros, according to a document elsewhere. obtained by AFP.
"A target of ten networks to be dismantled each year"
This plan also announces the formation, on a model tested in Lyon, of anti-tobacco trafficking groups "capable of carrying out punch operations and investigations" in the nine main identified smuggling areas of the country.
"We set ourselves a target of ten networks to be dismantled each year", warns Gabriel Attal.
A "cyber-tobacco" network will also be set up to track traffic on the Internet or social networks, and an effort will be made to develop "scientific customs" tools that make it possible to trace the origin of contraband tobacco, in order to to better determine the circuits of the traffics.
Gabriel Attal finally indicates the opening of a reflection, with his colleague Keeper of the Seals Éric Dupond-Moretti, with a view to "strengthening the criminal sanctions" against buyers, sellers and manufacturers of contraband tobacco.
"I set a clear objective for customs, to stop the parallel market's headlong rush by 2025", concludes the minister.
Over 600 tonnes of contraband tobacco seized in 2022
A sign of the vitality of the traffic, customs discovered in December 2021 and last September in the same town of Poincy (Seine-et-Marne) two "factories" for the clandestine manufacture of cigarettes, the first to be dismantled in France.
According to statistics published by customs, more than 284 tons of contraband tobacco were seized in 2020, 402 tons in 2021 and already more than 600 tons, including more than two thirds of cigarettes, in the first ten months of 2022.
Read alsoIle-de-France: cigarette trafficking would have generated 50 million euros in turnover
“This crime also represents a tax loss of 2.5 to 3 billion euros for the State.
It also heavily penalizes tobacconists, who nevertheless have an essential role in the cohesion of the territories and the social bond”, further defended the minister.
