Finance Minister Aleksandar Damjanovic said on Friday that Montenegro could earn up to 20 million euros by selling tobacco confiscated from the Port of Bar – a notorious hub for tobacco smuggling.

Montenegro Mulls Filling Budget by Selling Confiscated Tobacco

Montenegrin Minister of Finance Aleksandar Damjanovic (middle) at the government session in Podgorica. Photo: Government of Montenegro

Montenegro’s Minister of Finance, Aleksandar Damjanovic, said on Friday that Montenegro could earn up to 20 million euros by selling confiscated tobacco.

Damjanovic said his ministry will soon propose a Law on Taking over Confiscated Tobacco Products from the Port of Bar, which has become notorious as a cigarette-smuggling hub.

“Under the law proposal, we will establish takeover deadlines for tobacco products and offers to the former owners. If they do not take it over and take it out of Montenegro, we may hold a public auction,” Damjanovic told the government session.

“In this way, the state could earn between 15 and 20 million euros,” he added.

Since the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Bar has become a known centre for cigarette smuggling, from where imported tobacco is re-exported and cigarettes made in Montenegro are shipped.

According to official data, 21 of the 26 companies with storage in Bar are storing tobacco. Last July, the government announced new measures to prohibit the storage of tobacco in Bar as part of measures to prevent tobacco and cigarette smuggling.

On May 14, Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic visited the port during the seizure of 145.000 packages of tobacco, announcing that the government intended to set up a legal method for selling the confiscated cigarettes and so pumping money into the budget.

But on June 16, the British ambassador in Montenegro, Karen Maddocks, said confiscated tobacco should be destroyed, not sold, calling on authorities to improve tobacco smuggling investigations.

“We recently shared good UK practice with the Montenegrin government on what to do with seized goods in a way that complies with international protocols – which is to destroy such goods, due to concerns about their quality, health standards and intellectual property rights,” Maddocks said.

Montenegro’s Law on Customs says confiscated goods may be sold in public auctions, but, if they cannot be sold for security or health reasons, they must be destroyed. So far, Montenegrin authorities have destroyed smuggled tobacco in the KAP aluminum plant in Podgorica.

Montenegrin Customs recently seized 3.5 million euros worth of tobacco in Bar, while on February 10, the Customs Office reported that tobacco worth over 10 million euros had been stolen from hangars in the port since December 2021.

Police arrested three people, including customs officers, on suspicion of smuggling 11,349 boxes of cigarettes out of the port.

On March 2, the then Customs Office head, Milena Petricevic, reported a tobacco theft worth 225,000 euros, noting that the security cameras had been disabled during the theft.

In May 2019, a BIRN investigation showed how Montenegro had again become the hub of a global tobacco smuggling scam, funneling millions of counterfeit cigarettes into the EU with “ghost” ships, shell companies and forged paperwork.

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