ON a recent ramble down Henry Street in Dublin it was possible to count 25 people selling contraband cigarettes. There are often that many in the short street, unless the gardai in Store Street station have mounted one of their periodic heaves and filled a couple of vans with unhappy sellers.
But it is like trying to hold back the tide there will always be customers for anyone selling packets of cigarettes at half or two thirds of the official price, and there will always be sellers.
The sellers hold only one carton of cigarettes, for fear of being caught with more. Other figures lurk in the background, emerging to top up supplies.
As a criminal business it looks small scale and almost innocuous, but this is the retail end of a multi billion pound criminal network which reaches across the EU and into eastern Europe.
A reports for the European Parliament published this week showed how criminal gangs, also trafficking in drugs and in illegal immigrants, have proved among the greatest beneficiaries of the EU single market. By one estimate EU governments are losing revenue of up to £3.5 billion through illegal cigarette sales.
The principle behind the racket is relatively simple to boost trade the EU relaxed border controls and set up a system whereby taxes on goods would be paid after they arrived in the country in which they were to be sold.
The criminal gangs have proved adept at managing the system so, that they obtain lorryloads of cigarettes and other goods at wholesale and tax free prices, often from warehouses in ports such as Antwerp. With national taxes accounting for three quarters of the price of a packet of cigarettes, there are huge profits to be made.
According to the Dublin MEP Bernie Malone, 10 per cent of cigarettes in Dublin are sold illegally and below the retail price. In other European cities such as Naples, up to 70 per cent of sales are thought to be illegal.
The gangs work the system by setting up companies to buy the cigarettes, usually paying for them from Swiss bank accounts. The cigarettes arrive at their destination in lorry containers which are sometimes labelled as goods which would attract a lower rate of duty.
When the tax is due to be paid, the principals behind the deal cannot be found.
An inquiry by an EU parliamentary committee determined that respectable freight forwarders are often used by these companies. An attempt by customs authorities to combat the fraud by requiring the freight firms to "guarantee" tax payments has proved unworkable.
The forwarders are often themselves victims of the fraud, and EU authorities have found it technically difficult to enforce the guarantees in the courts, and politically awkward given that many of the companies would go bankrupt if required to pay.
SOME states, including the Republic, have taken to fixing duty paid stamps to cigarette packets, so that contraband can be identified. But such measures have done little to stem the flow.
With the reduction of standard border checks, customs authorities have placed more faith in prior information. But their intelligence sharing system has yet to prove up to the job.
Part of the problem is that the official monitoring of the transport of goods depends on paperwork, and the criminals can be long gone before false stamps and documents are identified. The European Parliament was told the "archaic" paper procedure was "simply unable to cope" with the 18 million operations a year carried out by European traders.
Cigarette companies told the parliamentary inquiry that they were against the smuggling and took steps to stop it, such as dealing only with recognised buyers of their products.
But the report pointed out that the manufacturers make profits from sales to all types of buyers, while it is national governments which lose revenue.
Yet while national governments - and ultimately taxpayers - are the losers, politicians have shown little collective enthusiasm for reform. Pan European regulations would make it easier to prosecute those criminals who can be identified, but many states resist such initiatives, fearing that they could limit sovereignty.
Finally the inquiry called for a computerised transit system. It also took the Swiss to task for their tax free zones and the secrecy allowed by their banking laws. "Switzerland is an ever present element in cigarette fraud," the report said.
It also suggested limiting access to the transit system, so that only reliable operators could use it, and the establishment of a common customs investigation body to coordinate the efforts of national customs services.
The viability of the EU's transit system and the credibility of its institutions were at stake unless governments acted "swiftly and effectively" to combat the fraudsters, the report concluded.