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The Croatian journalist Ivo Pukanic, who was murdered in Zagreb on October 23, had been one of the main witnesses in a Balkan cigarette contraband investigation of the police in the Italian city of Bari, the Italian Prosecutor Guiseppe Scelsi announced as quoted by the Trieste newspaper Il Piccolo.
Scelsi expressed the alarm of the Italian prosecution over the assassination of the owner of the Croatian newspaper Nacional, who was also its Editor-in-Chief, because it was going to affect the investigation against the Balkan cigarette smuggling mafia.
The Prosecutor also pointed out that another journalist who was also a witness in the tobacco contraband case - the Editor-in-Chief of Montenegro's Dan Daily Dusko Jovanovic - had been murdered in Podgorica on May 27, 2004.
According to Scelsi, the current Prime Minister and former President of Montenegro Milo Djukanovic had also been investigated as potentially involved in the Balkan cigarette smuggling ring but the investigation against him would be terminated because of his diplomatic immunity.
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Despite the complete smoking ban that is supposed to come into force in September, Turkey is immersed in cigarette smoke, national media reported.
A new law that prohibits smoking in all public places, including cafés, restaurants and bars, was voted and approved in January. It is expected to come into force in September.
Despite the impending ban, however, Turkey shows no sign of cutting down or giving up on cigarettes. A recent publication of the Anatolian Agency contained some facts indicative of the trend: in 2007, 76 packs of cigarettes were smoked per person and around 22.5 million euros are spent on cigarettes daily.
Other data shows that nearly half of Turkey’s population – about 25 million people, smoke. Beside being a major consumer, the country is also a major tobacco producer.
CIGARETTE smuggling into Ireland has “gone through the roof” due to the emergence of a new form of highly organised trafficking from the Baltic states.
Figures show that so-called “ant smuggling” has resulted in a 240% rise in cigarette seizures in the last two years. Ant smuggling refers to the frequent trafficking of relatively small quantities of contraband.
Customs say there are now an average of 1,300 cigarette seizures every month.
“The number of seizures has gone through the roof, because we have a new phenomenon now called ‘ant smuggling’ from the new member states,” said Ursula O’Neill of Customs Investigations.
The Balkans are home to Europe's most inveterate smokers, where 30 to 40 percent of all adults are gripped by the habit, a major cause of premature death.
"People in that part of Europe smoke the most compared to the continent as a whole," World Health Organization (WHO) director for Europe, Marc Danzon, told AFP on the sidelines of a regional conference on smoking prevention, held last week in Sofia.
Government representatives of eight of the countries in the region - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro - met there to discuss smoking prevention and regulation.
"Relatively little importance has been attributed until now to the battle against tobacco smoking," Danzon said.
The lack of action could be explained by "the power of the tobacco industry lobby, weaknesses of the regulatory, police and judicial systems, the presence of corruption and organized crime and its links to cigarette smuggling," the World Bank said in a recent report.
Three years ago as air raid sirens wailed and NATO jets roared overhead, hundreds of Belgrade residents would queue six abreast on city centre streets--braving bombs for a box of sanctions-busting cigarettes.
Such is the Balkan passion for tobacco.
"Each guy would snatch a carton and cradle it like a baby," recalls Petar Borovic, a doctor and veteran anti-smoking campaigner. "It didn't matter to him that it was pouring with rain and the bombs were coming: he was happy and serene."
That compulsion is a dream come true for global tobacco giants now eyeing the region, where tobacco control is a low priority in the struggle for growth and stability, as in post-communist eastern Europe a decade ago.
It is a nightmare for doctors and especially police, because a decade of wars, sanctions, chaos and corruption have turned the Balkans into a hugely lucrative cigarette smuggling centre.
On Friday, World Health Organisation (WHO) No Tobacco Day, more smoke will be rising from the Balkans than from most other places on earth.
Clarke's office last night refused to comment on the disclosures but revealed that he intends to sever all links with BAT if he wins the Tory leadership.
It has emerged that BAT cut a deal to build a £50 million cigarette factory in former Yugoslavia with multi-millionaire Serbian businessman Stanko Subotic.
An investigation by the Croatian magazine Nacional into the alleged criminal activities of Subotic detailed his cigarette-smuggling operations. It also claimed his money helped to hide former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the commander in charge at the time of the Srebrenica massacre which killed up to 8,000 people. Both men are wanted in The Hague for crimes against humanity. . .
Balkan experts believe that throughout the last decade cigarette-smuggling was a key instrument of the Yugoslav secret service, which used it to help finance the Balkan wars.
The revelation of links between BAT and Kestner has already forced one senior European politician to resign from the company's board. In May Peter Hess, the speaker of the Swiss parliament, quit his job with BAT.