Tobacco, trucks, tax authorities.
A priori, no point in common between these three words.
There is, however, one: the verb “to roll” embodied in the person of a dashing German octogenarian.
This 84-year-old man is suspected of having sold, between 2017 and the end of 2020, 40 t of roll-your-own tobacco bought in Luxembourg and sent by truck to Great Britain and Ireland to be resold, rolling in passing the German tax authorities.
This “smuggler grandfather”, so nicknamed by some German media, would be the logistician of a sector dismantled by the prosecutor's office in Lörrach and customs in Stuttgart, as revealed by the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.
A tax loss estimated at 2.8 million euros
The system was simple. This inhabitant from the south of Baden-Württemberg (southwest of Germany) obtained his hand-rolling tobacco in Luxembourg, where prices are lower. Thanks to connections in a transport company, the octogenarian would have organized the shipment of colossal quantities of this product to Great Britain and Ireland via Germany, where the network escaped taxes by falsifying tobacco labeling. or by concealing it among other goods. A juicy combination for the crooks, a big shortfall for the public authorities. Knowing that in Germany the tax on this tobacco is 70 euros per kilo, smugglers have inflicted on this country a tax loss estimated at 2.8 million euros. The amount would be even higher in Great Britain.
In fact, criminals seem to have taken advantage of tax disparities in European Union countries. There are minimums, voted in 2011, but there is no uniform tax on tobacco. This promotes traffic between countries with low rates and those with higher rates. The logistician grandpa had, according to German media, already been checked and intercepted in France in September 2020 with 800 kg of rolling tobacco. This product also appeals to traffickers. In Spain, for example, its contraband has exploded. It is offered on social networks and delivered by post. In 2020, 4 t were seized. We remain far from the volume attributed to the German octogenarian, to a 59-year-old accomplice and to this sector, which ensured its transactions by hiding the money in parts of machine tools.
