The BBC has an article on the cigarette smuggling industry in the United Kingdom.
From BBC News:
The trade in illegal cigarettes in England is big business.
Customs officers seized more than 50 million illicit cigarettes and nearly 4,250 kilos of hand rolling tobacco in the West Midlands area in 2007.
Of these hauls, 70% were found to be [...]
With a tax proposal that would make a pack of cigarette cost $9, New York officials are worried about various methods to smuggle cigarettes.
From the AP:
Cigarettes are sold tax free on tribal lands in New York, and the savings are eye-popping. Once lawmakers approve the state’s latest hike, crafted last week,
smokers will be able to [...]
From Reuters:
Take a second look at that signed Picasso print you bought on eBay.A ring of art counterfeiters has sold thousands of prints since 1999 bearing the forged signatures of Picasso, Miro, Dali and other famous artists to buyers around the world.
“Thousands of people will learn they … bought a fake,” said Chicago-based U.S. Attorney [...]
From the AP:
The smuggling of stolen antiquities from Iraq’s rich cultural heritage is helping finance Iraqi extremist groups, says the U.S. investigator who led the initial probe into the looting of Baghdad’s National Museum.Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos claimed both Sunni insurgents such as al-Qaida in Iraq and Shiite militias are receiving funding from the [...]
The Associated Press has a list of notable art heists that have occurred over the course of several years. Between May 2003 and February 2008, $752.5 million in artwork has been stolen worldwide.
The two most recent from the AP:
_ February 2008: Armed robbers steal four paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet worth $163.2 [...]
Representatives from 150 countries are meeting in Geneva to discuss the issue of cigarette smuggling on the black market.
Bloomberg News reports on the impact of this activity:
Estimates about the financial impact of the illegal tobacco trade vary. About 600 billion cigarettes, almost 11 percent of the 5.8 trillion cigarettes sold globally in 2006, entered [...]
The Boston Globe had an article on the emerging trend of museums returning antiques s to the country of origin.
These returned objects are only the most visible recent fruits of a powerful movement aimed at moving some of the world’s most prominent ancient treasures from the hands of foreign museums and collectors back to the [...]
From the AP:
It’s another public relations debacle for the nation’s museum industry, already tarred by reports that top institutions knowingly dealt in looted Italian artifacts.
Federal agents raided several Southern California museums on Thursday, mostly in search of artifacts allegedly taken from Thailand’s Ban Chiang archeological site, one of the most important prehistoric settlements ever [...]
In a post that we missed over the holidays, Derek Fincham of the Illicit Cultural Property Blog has a round-up of the top ten illicit art and antiquities stories of 2007.
Coming in at number 9:
9. The still-to-be revealed extent of the forgeries created by Shaun Greenhalgh, who lived in Council Housing in Bolton with his [...]
The Chicago Tribune write about the practice of purchasing “loosies”, or cigarettes purchased one at a time instead of the entire pack.
Gregory Laurence walked into a West Side gas station last month with a handful of change and what’s become a routine request in some parts of the city. Offering a dollar’s worth of quarters, [...]
