NCJ Number
223075
Journal
International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice Volume: 32 Issue: 1 Dated: Spring 2008 Pages: 43-63
Date Published
2008
Length
21 pages
Annotation
Two case studies of cigarette smuggling illustrate how organized criminal enterprises were used to fund the activities of terrorist groups.
Abstract
Throughout the 1990s and up to and including 2002, R.J. Reynolds and its conspirators illegally exported cigarettes to Iraq, violating the United Nations embargo that prohibited all imports to and exports from Iraq, except for specific food, medical supplies, and humanitarian assistance. In addition, U.S. law prohibited the sale of American tobacco products in Iraq. Through a complex, deceptive shipping scheme, cigarettes were smuggled from Turkey through the northern border of Iraq to two towns in Iraq controlled by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). R. J. Reynolds paid the PKK a fee for every container of cigarettes that moved across the Kurdish region of Turkey into PKK-controlled towns in northern Iraq. This helped fund the PKK's terrorist activities throughout the European Community. Uday Hussein, one of Saddam Hussein's sons, was also involved in cigarette distribution in Iraq. In the second case study, a Hezbollah cell operating out of Charlotte, NC, trafficked cigarettes from North Carolina to Michigan, in order to profit from the difference in cigarette tax rates between the two States. The purchase, transportation, storage, and distribution of the cigarettes involved multiple levels of deception. Money from this organized criminal enterprise was used to fund Hezbollah's terrorist activities in the Middle East. Information and data on these two case studies was obtained from original documents of the legal cases filed in American courts, as well as from the limited academic study of the Reynolds case and the more extensive body of literature that examines cigarette smuggling in the United States and abroad. 6 notes and 47 references