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South Africa, which is battling a scourge of cigarettes trafficking, on Monday started incinerating 20 million illicit cigarettes smuggled into the nation by its border with neighbouring Zimbabwe.
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The South African Income Service (SARS) mentioned that the contraband of 20 million cigarettes, valued at greater than $2.3 million, and smuggled into the nation between February and Might this yr, might be destroyed.
“The destruction of the illicit and smuggled cigarettes (at Beitbridge border publish) is prone to final a number of days,” is claimed in assertion.
The cigarettes had been seized over a number of operations, it mentioned.
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“Illicit commerce robs the federal government of much-needed income and destroy industries, exacerbating unemployment, poverty and inequality,” the income authority mentioned.
In January, one of many nation’s largest tobacco producers, British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA), mentioned that it had been pressured to chop round a 3rd of its workforce since 2020 as results of the “ballooning illicit tobacco commerce”.
BATSA estimated that “illicit cigarette commerce accounts for as much as 70 % of South Africa’s complete cigarette market”.
Cigarettes smuggled by Beitbridge
South Africa’s determination to ban tobacco through the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 resulted in a booming illicit market of cigarette commerce, advised the producer.
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South Africa imposed one of many world’s hardest lockdowns in March, together with a ban on gross sales of alcohol and cigarettes.
Elite police unit generally known as the Hawks final month arrested a driver for smuggling greater than 500 cartons of illicit cigarettes, discovered being transported in a gasoline tanker truck on its strategy to the central city of Potchefstroom.
In one other burst in a city Bronkhorstspruit, close to Pretoria, cigarettes valued at over one million {dollars}, smuggled by Beitbridge the place they had been falsely declared as tea leaves, had been seized in Might.
Beitbridge border crossing between the 2 international locations is among the busiest on the continent, but additionally one of the vital porous.
By Garrin Lambley © Agence France-Presse
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