Cigarette smuggling activities in Hong Kong surpass pre-pandemic levels: customs

Cigarette smuggling activities in Hong Kong have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, with the value of seizures reaching HK$2.24 billion (US$288 million) in the first 11 months of this year, 15 times the record before the Covid-19 outbreak five years ago.

Customs attributed the surge in seizures to ramped up enforcement efforts following increases in tobacco duty, as well as the move to hunt down warehouses where gangs hid the cigarettes.

With regular travel over the border back to normal following the end of the pandemic, smugglers had switched to a strategy of hiding illegal cigarettes in smaller batches, according to customs.

“We believe that the smugglers switched back to ‘ants moving home’ strategies that they adopted before the pandemic, meaning that they brought illicit cigarettes into Hong Kong in smaller batches,” said Samuel Hui, senior inspector at the revenue crimes investigation bureau at the Customs and Excise Department.

Between January and November, authorities cracked 19,459 cases involving black market cigarettes, representing a 65 per cent increase over the total for all of last year. By comparison, customs solved 17,368 cases in 2019, 3,159 in 2020, 4,009 in 2021 and 3,438 in 2022.

In the first 11 months of this year, 18,780 people were arrested for smuggling, storing, distributing or peddling illicit cigarettes, a 71 per cent increase over the 10,995 arrests made during all of 2023.