Illegal cigarette business brings important losses to the producers' budgets, as besides the drop in sales caused by the existence of the products in the black market, they also have to bear the costs related to the destruction of the counterfeit cigarettes. And the sums are not at all negligible and can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in only one year.
Following the request of the Curierul Naţional, the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) informed us that, last year, approximately 6 million cigarette packs, of various brands were seized to be confiscated. After seizure, the goods are stored in facilities of the National Customs Authority, and later handed over to warehousekeepers authorised for processed tobacco, to the registered recipients, to the registered senders or to authorised importers of such products, to be destroyed at their expense.
Gilda Lazăr, Corporate Affairs and Communications Director JTI Romania, confirmed all this information for the Curierul Naţional, saying that, last year, the company spent 60,000 dollars to destroy counterfeit cigarettes, after it had previously invested tens of thousands of euros in a giant shredder, to grind the packs before burying them.
Gilda Lazăr explained that, until a few years ago, the confiscated cigarettes would be seized by the authorities, "at prices below those charged by producers." Under these circumstances, the industry proposed the solution to destroy them (...) a solution, as far as we know, unique in Europe, because the whole logistics related to the collection of the confiscated products and their destruction is made at the producers' expense. Initially, we destroyed them by incineration, in the "23 August" furnace, then straight at the Glina waste pit, where various substances would be poured, then the packs were pressed by bulldozer and covered with earth,
