Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Cig­a­rettes are among the most com­mon il­lic­it­ly trad­ed prod­ucts in the world.

And, ac­cord­ing to re­ports, T&T is robbed of $30 mil­lion a year be­cause of this il­lic­it trade.

So as a re­sult there have been strin­gent mea­sures in place to try and deal with this is­sue.

But now there is new twist to the sit­u­a­tion.

Philip Mor­ris T&T Ltd has come for­ward to say that their Marl­boro and L&M cig­a­rettes are le­gal and should not be seized.

Philip Mor­ris T&T, which is in­cor­po­rat­ed here and af­fil­i­at­ed with Philip Mor­ris In­ter­na­tion­al, said that Mi­con Mar­ket­ing Ltd is a li­censed im­porter, dis­trib­u­tor and whole­saler of its prod­ucts lo­cal­ly.

“Philip Mor­ris has been in­formed by sev­er­al points of sale that some of the le­git­i­mate to­bac­co prod­ucts from Philip Mor­ris’ port­fo­lio are be­ing seized at the re­tail­er by au­thor­i­ties,” a no­tice from the com­pa­ny has stat­ed.

“These prod­ucts have been prop­er­ly im­port­ed by Mi­con Mar­ket­ing Ltd and are com­pli­ant with cur­rent lo­cal reg­u­la­tions and ap­plic­a­ble cus­toms clear­ances for im­por­ta­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion in T&T, hav­ing paid all cor­re­spond­ing tax­es/du­ties to this end,” it stat­ed.

Philip Mor­ris said it is con­cerned that the seizures are be­ing “ex­e­cut­ed with­out any fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion.”

“Such act(s) will ad­verse­ly af­fect fair com­pe­ti­tion in the T&T to­bac­co in­dus­try, re­sult­ing in eco­nom­ic loss to lo­cal com­mer­cial busi­ness­es and the sup­pres­sion of con­sumer choice in the lo­cal mar­ket,” it stat­ed.

In case of any of­fi­cial in­quiries per­tain­ing to the le­gal­i­ty of these prod­ucts at your points of sale, we re­quest that you im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact Brath­waite Law & Co to clar­i­fy any con­cerns.

Ac­cord­ing to Crime Stop­pers “with bil­lions of cig­a­rettes be­ing pro­duced an­nu­al­ly, the prof­its made from its il­lic­it trade are huge. It is es­ti­mat­ed that one full con­tain­er of il­lic­it­ly trad­ed cig­a­rettes can yield ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1mil­lion in prof­its. Con­se­quent­ly, crim­i­nal net­works are us­ing the il­lic­it trade to fund their transna­tion­al il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.”