Photo released by Sirpa on January 15, 2023 of counterfeit cigarettes in a clandestine factory in Saint-Aubin-les-Elbeuf, near Rouen (SIRPA/AFP/Handout)
There was everything to make, package, ship the counterfeit cigarettes, including a living space so you didn’t have to leave the premises. The gendarmes dismantled Thursday near Rouen the largest clandestine cigarette factory to date in France.
More than 100 tonnes of products (55 tonnes of cigarettes, 50 tonnes of labels, filters, paper, packaging… and 18 tonnes of tobacco residues and cigarette waste) were seized. The resale price of counterfeit tobacco is estimated at 13.7 million euros, according to the national gendarmerie.
This makes it the most important clandestine factory discovered to date in France.
The first was in December 2021 by customs in Poincy, a small town in Seine-et-Marne of 750 inhabitants.
Since this “first”, two other clandestine workshops have been uncovered: a packaging site in La Longueville (North) and a storage place in Poincy, again.
The traffic is booming: more than 284 tons of contraband tobacco were seized in 2020 in France, 402 tons in 2021 and more than 600 tons, including more than two thirds of cigarettes, in the first ten months of 2022.
Photo released by Sirpa on January 15, 2023 of a counterfeit cigarette factory in Saint-Aubin-les-Elbeuf, near Rouen (SIRPA/AFP/Handout)
On January 12, the gendarmes, alerted by Europol at the end of 2022 to the presence of international cigarette trafficking in the industrial zone of Saint-Aubin-les-Elbeuf, near Rouen, discovered a real integrated factory.
– Perfect autonomy –
The factory, which about sixty gendarmes invest, includes three units. A production unit with two chains, one for making cigarettes from raw tobacco and another dedicated to packaging in packets and then in cartridges in the name of a famous manufacturer.
There is also a storage area where the cartons of cigarettes are packaged in cardboard on film-covered pallets, all ready for delivery.
Finally, a living area completes the set, with a dormitory equipped with about fifteen beds, a kitchen area, a dining area and a relaxation area, which allowed criminals to live on site in complete autonomy. There was also a generator.
All the products seized were immediately destroyed, as were the production machines, the gendarmerie said.
The gendarmes also seized two road sets (tractors and semi-trailers of 38 tons), lifts, pallet trucks, tools, household appliances and a ton of foodstuffs which were donated to the food bank.
Nine people, aged 21 to 55, all of foreign nationality, were arrested and placed in police custody. The majority of them are of Moldovan nationality.
Smuggled cigarettes discovered during a search on August 4, 2021 in Aartselaar, near Brussels (AFP/Archives/John THYS)
– Huge profits –
In view of the scope of this case, the Rouen public prosecutor’s office has withdrawn in favor of the Junalco (national jurisdiction for the fight against organized crime) of Paris, which has requested in particular the Central Office for the Fight against Itinerant Delinquency (OCLDI) and the judicial investigation department of Finance (SEJF).
The nine people arrested were presented to justice in Paris on Sunday.
The enormous profits generated arouse the appetite of criminal organizations often specialized in narcotics, which seek to diversify.
“The manufacturing cost is one euro per pack, the rest is margin”, recalled in early December Christophe Perruaux, director of the SEJF, in charge of the two Poincy cases and now that of Rouen.
Criminal organizations in Eastern Europe, from the Baltic countries to the Balkans, have a stranglehold on tobacco trafficking. Previously established in Ukraine and then in Poland, the factories began, after the Russian offensive in Ukraine, to take root closer to the French borders, in Belgium in particular.
They are now settling in France, where the black market represents approximately 30% of the tobacco in circulation, with the desire to bring production and consumption closer together to optimize transport costs.
“A clandestine factory operates for a maximum of three months,” explained the head of customs intelligence, Florian Colas, in early December. Its production lines produce an average of 700 packets per minute, 4,200 cartridges per hour.
“Each machine costs between 50,000 and 200,000 euros, they are profitable in a few days and the margin rates are staggering”, he added.
At a rate of 8 hours a day, these factories report, according to customs information, from 80,000 to 120,000 euros per day, or 7 million euros for three months.
© 2023 AFP
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