AN INVESTIGATION by Customs officers in Ireland has helped to expose an international cigarette smuggling operation worth millions of euro.
The cigarettes were being smuggled into major ports in Ireland and the UK with false paperwork, but Revenue investigators were able to track a single container back to Florida and bring to light the previously unknown smuggling route.
The subsequent investigation has culminated in Roman Vidal, a 57-year-old Florida-based businessman, pleading guilty in court there to conspiring to commit wire and mail fraud in connection with the smuggling of 27 million cigarettes out of the United States into the EU to avoid paying $6.5 million in customs and tax duties.
He will be sentenced in November.
“The initial detection of cigarettes smuggled from Miami by Irish Customs officers ultimately led to this prosecution,” a Revenue spokesman said yesterday.
It is the first prosecution of its kind and the result of a European-US anti-fraud operation which began in Ireland eight years ago.
According to Customs sources in Dublin, in 2001 and 2002, 22 suspect containers arrived into Dublin from Miami. Six were intercepted and 40 million cigarettes found. An investigation began immediately and, for the first time, the US was identified as a supply source or conduit.
“Up to that point the focus of attention was on traffic from the Middle and Far East where most counterfeit cigarettes originated. This meant customs in the EU did not regard traffic from the US as posing a threat where cigarette smuggling was concerned,” the spokesman said.
“It is evident the smugglers took full advantage of this by routing contraband cigarettes into the EU via Miami,” he said. With the assistance of the European Anti-Fraud Office the investigation identified a number of people in Florida involved in fraud, including arranging the shipments.
In one instance in 2006 a meeting took place in Spain and an order was placed through a Florida-based contact for a shipment destined for the Border near Monaghan, according to sources involved in the investigation in Ireland.
The cigarettes were produced in the Canaries, shipped to a company in Panama, re-boxed there and sent onto Miami where they were again re-boxed and with a false cover load and paper-work were sent to a company with an address in Monaghan.
In this case the bill of lading with the container said it was full of wooden flooring, but underneath it customs officers found seven million cigarettes.
The loss in VAT and excise duties to the exchequer was in the region of €1.8 million for that container alone. Documents lodged with the courts in Florida state that on four separate occasions between December 2001 and April 2008, Vidal smuggled more than 27 million cigarettes out of the port of Miami.
They went to Aachen in Germany, Felixstowe in the UK and Dublin.
US customs agents told the court that they were able to trace shipments to Ireland to gangs linked to the Real IRA.
Customs and Revenue here have acknowledged the role of the US authorities. “Their involvement which culminated in criminal charges being brought against this offender is an important development in that traditionally cigarette trafficking is tackled through detection, seizure and prosecution at the destination rather than pursing those responsible at the shipment or supply side,” the spokesman said.