Switzerland Alarmed, Growing Cigarette Smuggling Most of Kosovo

In addition to last year, 300 million illegal cigarettes or 15 million packages have been introduced on the market there.

This amount would be sufficient to be consumed by 1,000 people per day for a period of 41 years.

This disturbing phenomenon became the subject of treatment by the popular Swiss newspaper Black.ch.

According to this newspaper, 80 million illegal cigarettes have come from Kosovo, 20 million from Serbia and 10 million from Portugal. Meanwhile, more than half of the smuggled goods could not be identified correctly from which countries come.

While legal cigarette sales in Switzerland have dropped from 9 billion to 7.5 billion, it is said that the illegal market has increased by 50 percent over the past four years.

This has brought financial damage to the Swiss state of 76 million francs, broadcast Clankosova.tv.

The study released by the consulting firm KPMG, which includes 38 European markets, shows that 3.5 percent of cigarette consumption in Switzerland is illegal, a low but emerging percentage.

At the European level, the figures are even more shocking: 52.2 billion illegal cigarettes have been consumed in 2024, or 10 percent of the entire market, broadcast Klankosova.tv.

France and the United Kingdom are among the most affected countries, with rates of smuggling reaching 26 percent in Britain.

According to the KPMG, 19.4 billion euros in tax revenues have been lost across Europe as a result of this phenomenon. /Periscope/