Big Tobacco: Without a Trace
Big Tobacco: Without a Trace
Last century, tobacco was one of the world’s most successful industries. This century, if current trends continue, it is expected to kill one billion people.
Ten years ago, OCCRP and its partners published an investigation into the booming underworld of illicit tobacco. Our stories exposed how the largest manufacturers were diverting billions of cigarettes onto the $40 billion-a-year black market, fuelling organized crime and corruption.
Now, as international efforts to clamp down on the industry gather pace, we are launching a new series exposing how those same companies, collectively known as Big Tobacco, are still trying to subvert worldwide efforts to curb cigarette smuggling. (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), März 2020)