<nettime> How Cigarettes Funded Balkan Wars

[Paul Miller <anansi1@earthlink.net>]

An amusing, if twisted, article from the author of McMafia: Crime  
Without Frontiers
Paul aka Dj Spooky
ps, I don't smoke...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7505532.stm

How Cigarettes Funded Balkan Wars
Misha Glenny

The first counterfeit cigarettes appeared on the markets of the former  
Yugoslavia just days after the war broke out in June 1991.

These were fake Marlboros, Rothmans, Winstons and other well-known  
brands that had been manufactured in different parts of the Balkans  
and beyond.

I was a smoker at the time (readers may be pleased to know I've since  
given up the dreadful habit) and so I was a willing customer for these  
staggeringly cheap products.

Home owner outside destroyed house in Serbia
The cigarettes often arrived in the Balkans via Rotterdam and Asia

There was only one drawback - when you drew your first puff, instead  
of the familiar blend of Virginia tobacco, the back of your throat was  
assaulted by a taste akin to a mixture of sawdust and goat's dung.

It took a restless Serbian entrepreneur called Vladmir "Vanja" Bokan  
to provide the market with an improved product a couple of years later.

In a darkened cafe in Belgrade, a former business associate of  
Vanja's, Mr X, told me how it was done.

My interlocutor warned me that if I identified him, he would soon be  
dead. "And they'll probably kill you, too,"' Mr X added for emphasis.  
But after this sombre introduction, he warmed to his subject.

Speedboats

Mr X explained how Bokan would buy cigarettes direct from factories in  
Western Europe and the United States for export into Europe's two main  
free-trade zones, Rotterdam in Holland and Zug in Switzerland.

This meant they attracted none of the high purchase taxes imposed on  
cigarettes in most countries.

German official displays confiscated cigarettes
An Italian crime syndicate distributed the Balkan cigarettes through  
Europe

The billions of cigarettes were then flown to countries in Central  
Asia and North Africa before being flown back into the Balkans.

Criminals and intelligence services from all the former republics of  
Yugoslavia co-operated in the logistics of this trade but the  
cigarettes' physical destination was the tiny coastal republic of  
Montenegro that borders on Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania.

The leading politician in Montenegro - then as now - was the former  
President Milo Djukanovic.

He went on record long ago explaining that Montenegro did not consider  
these goods to be contraband and that he was justified in imposing  
what he styled a "transit tax" on the cigarettes.

In Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital, I heard from Daliborka  
Uljarevic how as a schoolgirl she watched lorry after lorry trundle  
out of the factory near her school.

This was the weigh station between the airport where giant Ilyushin  
transporters dropped off the contraband and the harbour just down the  
coast at Bar.

Here the goods were loaded on to super-fast speedboats and for almost  
a decade, 20 of these vessels travelled across the Adriatic to Italy  
every single night - weather permitting.

The cigarettes were dumped on the coast of Apulia to be picked up by  
members of one of Italy's youngest organised crime syndicates, the  
Sacra Corona Unita (SCU).

Bullets

The SCU distributed the smuggled goods all over Europe - Britain was a  
particular target because legally-sold cigarettes are subject to very  
high taxes in the United Kingdom.

	
The man alleged to be the biggest cigarette smuggler of all is in a  
Russian jail awaiting extradition

Over a seven-year period, the European Union estimates it lost $8bn in  
revenue to the Balkan cigarette trade.

Instead, the profits went to a variety of criminal groups often  
associated with some of the most murderous paramilitary operations  
that became notorious during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

Italy and the European Union are still investigating the trade.  
Meanwhile, Stanko Subotic "Cane", the man alleged to be the biggest  
cigarette smuggler of all is in a Russian jail awaiting extradition to  
Serbia.

He may be facing many years in jail but at least he has so far avoided  
the fate of the man who invented the whole trade, Vanja Bokan. In the  
mid-nineties Bokan had fled to the Athens from Belgrade in fear for  
his life, after an assassination attempt in broad daylight on the  
streets of the Serbian capital.

He swiftly secured Greek citizenship and once again prospered as a  
master smuggler.

But on 7 October 2000, as he emerged from his Mercedes 500 in front of  
his villa, Bokan's face was obliterated by 29 bullets fired from a  
couple of semi-automatics. The killers were never brought to justice.

Misha Glenny is the author of McMafia: Crime without frontiers. You  
can hear How Crime Took on the World on Radio 4 at 2000 BST.


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