T&T emerges as hub for US$15M illicit cigarette trade, report reveals

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

A qui­et shift in the il­lic­it cig­a­rette trade from Suri­name to Trinidad could be one of the fac­tors fu­elling a boom­ing de­mand in pris­ons, where a sin­gle cig­a­rette can cost an in­mate up to $100.

These cig­a­rettes en­ter the pris­ons via drone drops.

In a sin­gle night, prison of­fi­cials said they have record­ed up to 50 drones fly­ing over the pris­ons to de­liv­er con­tra­band to pris­on­ers.

“It’s like they are work­ing a taxi ser­vice,” Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don told Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, re­fer­ring to the drones’ fre­quent ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The is­sue of ad­dress­ing con­tra­band is a con­stant,” Gor­don said.

“It’s a lu­cra­tive busi­ness in prison.”

When of­fi­cers in­ter­rupt that trade, they come un­der at­tack.

On Au­gust 18, prison of­fi­cers said they in­ter­cept­ed an aer­i­al de­liv­ery of 16 car­tons of il­lic­it cig­a­rettes at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca.

A stan­dard cig­a­rette car­ton con­tains ten packs to­talling 200 cig­a­rettes.

Prison of­fi­cials said these 16 car­tons could have raked in $320,000.

For this year, sev­er­al in­ter­cep­tions have been made.

If de­mand out­weighs sup­ply, Gor­don said, the cost of one cig­a­rette would in­crease.

He said an in­mate could pay as much as “$100” for a smug­gled cig­a­rette.

Cig­a­rettes are the world’s most il­lic­it­ly trad­ed prod­uct and can po­ten­tial­ly pro­vide the high­est rev­enue.

Two pop­u­lar ways of achiev­ing this are by pro­duc­ing and sell­ing coun­ter­feit cig­a­rettes and sourc­ing cig­a­rettes le­git­i­mate­ly pro­duced in one coun­try, then smug­gling them in­to a sec­ond coun­try for re­sale.

Dur­ing sev­er­al in­tel­li­gence-based se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions this year, dozens of pack­ets of il­lic­it cig­a­rettes were al­so con­fis­cat­ed with­in the prison walls.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic al­so throw pro­hib­it­ed items over the walls at the Port-of-Spain Prison for in­mates.

“What we have been ad­vo­cat­ing for, of course, is the im­ple­men­ta­tion and use of tech­no­log­i­cal coun­ter­mea­sures with the use of drones,” Gor­don said.

Gor­don said the quan­ti­ty and weight of con­tra­band some drones car­ry amazes him.

He said prison of­fi­cers no longer take the chance to smug­gle con­tra­band in­to the pris­ons be­cause they are searched by the Prison In­ter­dic­tion Team and scanned up­on en­try.

“Those who get caught, I say good rid­dance.”

The shift of the il­lic­it cig­a­rette trade from Suri­name to Trinidad is con­tained in a 48-page re­port by C-Anal­i­sis, a Colom­bian-based com­pa­ny that pro­vides con­sul­tan­cy in se­cu­ri­ty is­sues, risk analy­sis, pub­lic pol­i­cy and rur­al de­vel­op­ment, which Guardian Me­dia ob­tained.

Da­ta pro­vid­ed in the re­port showed that in 2023, cig­a­rette trade in Suri­name was rough­ly US$25.3 mil­lion, while in Trinidad, the fig­ure stood at US$3.6 mil­lion.

By 2024, the re­port stat­ed that Suri­name’s trade had dropped to US$10 mil­lion, while “im­ports to Trinidad” rose to US$4.1 mil­lion.

“This da­ta should be con­sid­ered a min­i­mum, since smug­glers make big ef­forts to hide. Our main hy­poth­e­sis is that near­ly US$15 mil­lion that did not go to Suri­name in 2024 went to Trinidad in­stead and a large por­tion was un­der­re­port­ed,” the re­port said.

He said cig­a­rettes man­u­fac­tured in Paraguay, Viet­nam, Chi­na, In­dia, Ko­rea and South­east Asia are smug­gled in­to T&T, Grena­da, Guyana, and Suri­name.

The re­port, ti­tled “Memo 329-Trinidad and To­ba­go”, was re­leased in Sep­tem­ber 2026 by C-Anal­i­sis di­rec­tor Daniel Ri­co, who vis­it­ed Trinidad twice to in­ves­ti­gate the coun­try’s il­lic­it cig­a­rette trade.

What caught Ri­co’s at­ten­tion dur­ing his vis­it was a Trinida­di­an busi­ness­man’s link to 14 ship­ments of il­lic­it cig­a­rettes to­talling 32 con­tain­ers be­tween 2022 and 2023.

In Jan­u­ary 2025, at least 12 con­tain­ers of il­lic­it Car­ni­val brand cig­a­rettes, pur­chased in Ko­rea, ar­rived in Port-of-Spain, with the re­main­ing 20 await­ing con­fir­ma­tion.

The con­tain­ers were de­tained for ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues.

“It was 32 con­tain­ers of to­bac­co. It was enor­mous, giv­en your pop­u­la­tion,” Ri­co said.

Each con­tain­er had 10 mil­lion cig­a­rettes, he said.

“We’re talk­ing about 320 mil­lion cig­a­rettes,” Ri­co said.

“The car­go was in the process of be­ing rerout­ed to Suri­name with the ul­ti­mate goal of be­ing smug­gled in­to Brazil, through the north­ern bor­der and a few to oth­er is­lands with­in the re­gion,” the re­port stat­ed.

The re­port showed a copy of the bill of lad­ing No. 6400908980, dat­ed No­vem­ber 27, 2025.

This date was is­sued ten months in ad­vance, in­di­cat­ing a clear pat­tern of fraud.

Fur­ther­more, the con­signee’s in­for­ma­tion was lat­er up­dat­ed on Feb­ru­ary 21, 2025, to an­oth­er lo­cal com­pa­ny, while the ship­ment was al­ready in tran­sit to Trinidad, prov­ing that smug­gled cig­a­rettes had en­tered the coun­try.

“In this method, bills of lad­ing and oth­er con­tain­er doc­u­men­ta­tion are al­tered to in­tro­duce false des­ti­na­tions and le­gal cov­ers, al­low­ing the car­go to be rerout­ed and dis­trib­uted to oth­er ports,” the re­port stat­ed.

One of the com­pa­nies iden­ti­fied in the re­port is close­ly linked to a Trinida­di­an busi­ness­man (name iden­ti­fied) who pur­chased Ko­re­an-brand cig­a­rettes.

The re­port stat­ed that the busi­ness­man main­tained per­son­al ties with a for­mer min­is­ter who re­port­ed­ly pro­tect­ed him.

The re­port fur­ther stat­ed that the busi­ness­man sought agree­ments with le­gal cig­a­rette op­er­a­tors, aim­ing to com­min­gle il­lic­it prod­ucts with le­gal ship­ments, us­ing au­tho­rised ware­hous­es.

“This ap­pears to be his new strat­e­gy fol­low­ing the re­vo­ca­tion of his Free Trade Zone li­cense. He has been on the radar since 2020, not as a re­sult of gov­ern­ment in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but due to in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by a pri­vate-sec­tor en­ti­ty.”

As of 2025, Ri­co said the Free Trade Zone frame­work had been re­placed by the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones (SEZ), aligned with Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co­op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment guide­lines that strength­en reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight.

“All op­er­a­tors are now re­quired to reap­ply un­der this new sys­tem, which in­cludes height­ened com­pli­ance and reg­u­la­to­ry su­per­vi­sion.”

While the busi­ness holds a li­cence to im­port cig­a­rettes, it does not have au­tho­ri­sa­tion to bring them in­to the SEZ.

Based on the find­ings in the re­port, the busi­ness­man is one of three peo­ple in­volved in the smug­gling net­work.

“One was as­sas­si­nat­ed in Suri­name, and the oth­er fled to Brazil. These de­vel­op­ments sug­gest grow­ing in­ter­nal ten­sions and a reshuf­fling of roles with­in the il­lic­it trade net­works.”

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the busi­ness­man owes ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$500,000 in port stor­age fees.

“His mer­chan­dise was seized, and the con­tain­ers have been im­mo­bilised for over 30 months. To have them re­leased, he would need to pay this amount, which, com­pared to po­ten­tial il­lic­it prof­its, is con­sid­ered a min­i­mal penal­ty. Sit­u­a­tions like this re­veal how the cost of vi­o­lat­ing reg­u­la­tions can be in­signif­i­cant in com­par­i­son to the ben­e­fits of smug­gling.”

The plan is to pay the fees, reroute the con­tain­ers to Grena­da and then trans­fer them on­to food ves­sels to Suri­name.

There, the car­go will be con­sol­i­dat­ed on­to larg­er ves­sels for Belém in Brazil.

“We re­alised that T&T is used as a tran­ship­ment zone,” Ri­co said.

Since 2014, the US De­part­ment of State has iden­ti­fied Trinidad as a sig­nif­i­cant tran­ship­ment point for il­lic­it drugs.

“Il­lic­it to­bac­co works as a multi­na­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion. So we would see pro­duc­ers in Paraguay and Ko­rea have been linked with cor­rup­tion, mon­ey laun­der­ing and nar­cotics. They pro­duced the cig­a­rettes in or­der to clean mon­ey. This is how ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions prof­it from it,” Ri­co said.

Big ship­ments al­so go to ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions in Mex­i­co and Colom­bia.

Ri­co said it’s a prof­it-gen­er­at­ing busi­ness.

“It’s more lu­cra­tive than nar­cotics.”

He said the mon­ey flow from nar­cotics takes around six months to get back to the main sup­pli­er.

“With con­tra­band, this takes a month.”

Il­lic­it cig­a­rettes al­so en­ter the coun­try via pirogues and land in the hands of crim­i­nal gangs.

The re­port stat­ed that al­though there is no cur­rent dom­i­nance of street gangs in the cig­a­rette trade, “there is a grow­ing con­cern about the even­tu­al in­volve­ment of lo­cal crim­i­nal groups such as Ras­ta City (aka Sev­en), Mus­lim City (aka Sixx), and ABG (Any­body Gets It), or from for­eign gangs that al­so have a mi­nor pres­ence in the coun­try (cur­rent­ly these gangs are pri­mar­i­ly from Venezuela).”

In oth­er coun­tries, the re­port stat­ed that ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­trol by such groups quick­ly ex­tends to man­ag­ing the il­lic­it to­bac­co mar­ket.

“While vi­o­lence is not yet a defin­ing el­e­ment in this mar­ket, it would be a mis­take to as­sume this will re­main the case. These risks show the need for sus­tained mon­i­tor­ing and ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion mech­a­nisms to pre­vent an even­tu­al crim­i­nal con­sol­i­da­tion around the il­lic­it cig­a­rette trade.”

Il­lic­it cig­a­rettes al­so en­ter the coun­try us­ing pirogues that can car­ry up to 4,000 cas­es of cig­a­rettes, the re­port stat­ed.

A pack of cig­a­rettes costs a lit­tle over US$0.20 to pro­duce, but can fetch be­tween US$2.22 and US$2.30 on the lo­cal mar­ket.

The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Ltd (WIT­CO) man­u­fac­tures and mar­kets the Dun­hill, Lucky Strike and Roth­mans brands in Trinidad.

In a March 2026 ar­ti­cle, WIT­CO es­ti­mat­ed that il­lic­it cig­a­rette ac­tiv­i­ty had jumped 50 per cent since the 2026 ex­cise hike was an­nounced in last year’s bud­get.

Ex­cise du­ties on cig­a­rettes rose from $5.26 to $10.52 per 20-pack.

As a re­sult, WIT­CO raised the min­i­mum price for a pack of cig­a­rettes to $24.

Be­fore Ri­co’s ar­rival, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had al­ready launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the theft of a ship­ment of IBIZA cig­a­rettes from the Port of Port-of-Spain in Oc­to­ber 2021.

The cig­a­rettes, which were not sub­ject to cus­toms pro­ce­dures, were stolen while in tran­sit to an­oth­er des­ti­na­tion.

This prompt­ed the po­lice to warn the pub­lic against buy­ing the pil­fered items.

The po­lice stat­ed that these items were not sub­ject to cus­toms pro­ce­dures.

Last Ju­ly, the To­bac­co Con­trol Unit un­der the Min­istry of Health gave a list of more than 50 un­li­censed/il­lic­it to­bac­co prod­ucts in T&T that should not be of­fered for sale, pur­chased by busi­ness­es or con­sumed by the pub­lic.

The list de­scribed the pack­ag­ing of cig­a­rettes, to­bac­co and cig­ars.

Among the il­lic­it cig­a­rettes iden­ti­fied were Car­ni­val, Gift, Sun­ny, Con­vay, Mil­lion­aire, Gold City and Black­stone.

Ri­co es­ti­mat­ed T&T’s cig­a­rette mar­ket at 1.2 bil­lion sticks.

The re­port re­vealed that the au­thor­i­ties be­gan to take is­sue with the il­le­gal cig­a­rette trade af­ter stolen cig­a­rette ship­ments were found stored in ho­tels.

A grow­ing con­cern in the re­port is the in­creas­ing in­volve­ment and role of the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty in cig­a­rette smug­gling and coun­ter­feit­ing op­er­a­tions.

“Au­thor­i­ties have iden­ti­fied an ex­pand­ing struc­ture op­er­at­ing with­out for­mal records or re­ceipts, and it is sus­pect­ed that the lead­ers of re­gion­al smug­gling op­er­a­tions are con­nect­ed to Chi­nese net­works,” the re­port stat­ed.

One emerg­ing pat­tern in the re­port in­volved some Chi­nese mer­chants im­port­ing their own brands of il­le­gal cig­a­rettes, pri­mar­i­ly in­tend­ed for con­sump­tion with­in their own com­mu­ni­ty.

“Ac­cord­ing to po­lice sources, these trans­ac­tions raised red flags as they are in­dica­tive of po­ten­tial mon­ey laun­der­ing schemes rather than sim­ple smug­gling,” the re­port stat­ed.

The au­thor­i­ties have in­ter­cept­ed ship­ments of cig­a­rettes in poor con­di­tion, linked to this com­pa­ny.

In 2021, the then Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment, through a pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ship of or­gan­i­sa­tions, es­tab­lished an An­ti-Il­lic­it Trade Task Force (AIT­TF) to tack­le il­lic­it trade.

Among the 12 mem­bers on the task force are the Min­istry of Trade, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, Crime Stop­pers and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA).

Be­tween 2021 and 2022, the po­lice’s Mul­ti-Agency Task Force and the To­bac­co Con­trol Unit seized 115,766 cig­a­rettes.

De­liv­er­ing the 2027 fis­cal pack­age last month, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said the AIT­TF seized over 920,000 packs of il­le­gal cig­a­rettes be­tween June 2025 and Au­gust 2026, and promised to ac­cel­er­ate those ef­forts.

How­ev­er, the re­port stat­ed that the coun­try’s in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate and dis­man­tle or­gan­ised smug­gling net­works re­mains con­strained.

“Al­though oc­ca­sion­al seizures of cig­a­rettes oc­cur, these are not ac­com­pa­nied by thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tions aimed at un­cov­er­ing traf­fick­ing struc­tures, iden­ti­fy­ing key play­ers or ap­ply­ing le­gal tools such as as­set for­fei­ture.”

The re­port al­so stat­ed that penal­ties for smug­gling are es­sen­tial­ly ad­min­is­tra­tive.

“Al­though leg­is­la­tion such as the To­bac­co Act ex­ists which would al­low for crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in prac­tice, it is not en­forced. In fact, it is re­port­ed that there are no in­di­vid­u­als im­pris­oned for smug­gling across the coun­try, ex­cept in ex­cep­tion­al cas­es of re­peat of­fences, such as when an in­di­vid­ual is caught three times,” the re­port stat­ed.

In 2015, Justin Mo­hammed was sen­tenced to 12 months in jail for throw­ing eight packs of cig­a­rettes over the wall of the Fred­er­ick Street Prison.

Sev­er­al prison of­fi­cers caught smug­gling cig­a­rettes in­to the prison were al­so ar­rest­ed and charged, with bare­ly any­one fac­ing jail time.

While T&T has been fight­ing il­le­gal to­bac­co, Ri­co said the au­thor­i­ties should leave no grey area for tran­ship­ment of con­tain­ers.

“Ban trans­ship­ments in the ports,” Ri­co said.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that mar­itime sur­veil­lance is lim­it­ed, with the smug­gling of il­le­gal cig­a­rettes over­looked.

Un­der the To­bac­co Con­trol Act, Chap­ter 30:04, no per­son shall man­u­fac­ture, im­port, ex­port or dis­trib­ute to­bac­co prod­ucts with­out a li­cence.

Al­so, no per­son shall sell or pur­chase any to­bac­co prod­uct from a man­u­fac­tur­er, dis­trib­u­tor, im­porter, ex­porter or whole­saler who is not li­censed un­der the Act.

On sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, a per­son can face a $100,000 fine and six months’ im­pris­on­ment.

Up­on con­vic­tion on in­dict­ment, a per­son is li­able to a $200,000 fine and one year in prison.

The Sun­day Guardian sent a list of ques­tions to the TTMA, but the or­gan­i­sa­tion failed to re­spond.

Crime Stop­pers di­rec­tor Dar­rin Carmicheal said he was ad­vised not to speak on the is­sue.

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin was al­so sent a What­sApp mes­sage seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on the il­lic­it cig­a­rette trade, but there was no re­sponse.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions by Guardian Me­dia, WIT­CO stat­ed that the il­le­gal cig­a­rette trade con­tin­ues to be a se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic, se­cu­ri­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry con­cern for the com­pa­ny.

“It de­prives the Gov­ern­ment of rev­enue, places le­git­i­mate man­u­fac­tur­ers and re­tail­ers at a com­pet­i­tive dis­ad­van­tage and cre­ates in­come for per­sons op­er­at­ing out­side the law.

“WIT­CO sup­ports bal­anced tax­a­tion to­geth­er with stronger, in­tel­li­gence-led en­force­ment, bor­der con­trols and col­lab­o­ra­tion among gov­ern­ment, law en­force­ment and le­git­i­mate in­dus­try.”

WIT­CO’s 2025 an­nu­al re­port es­ti­mat­ed that il­lic­it cig­a­rette ac­tiv­i­ty in­creased by 50 per cent fol­low­ing the ex­cise in­crease in last year’s bud­get

The ex­cise dou­bled from $5.26 to $10.52 per pack of 20.

More re­cent­ly, WIT­CO’s in­de­pen­dent in­dus­try and mar­ket re­search es­ti­mates a jump from eight to 15 per cent, ”al­most an 88 per cent in­crease in il­lic­it trade to date, at­trib­uted to the growth of the widen­ing price dif­fer­ence be­tween le­gal and il­le­gal prod­ucts.”

Es­ti­mates have shown the high prof­it mar­gins as­so­ci­at­ed with il­lic­it cig­a­rettes.

The com­pa­ny es­ti­mat­ed that a sin­gle con­tain­er of il­lic­it cig­a­rettes can gen­er­ate ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1 mil­lion in prof­it.

The cost of a pack of il­le­gal cig­a­rettes ranged be­tween TT$10 and $15.

A le­gal pack is priced be­tween TT$20 and $24.

It said every il­le­gal pack sold dis­places a po­ten­tial le­git­i­mate sale while avoid­ing ex­cise du­ty, VAT, im­port du­ty, cor­po­ra­tion tax and oth­er fis­cal oblig­a­tions and reg­u­la­to­ry costs.

“This ad­verse­ly af­fects WIT­CO as well as le­git­i­mate dis­trib­u­tors, re­tail­ers, em­ploy­ees and the wider do­mes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing val­ue chain.”

WIT­CO stat­ed that sev­er­al stud­ies and re­ports have shown that il­lic­it cig­a­rette trade fu­els transna­tion­al crime and gang ac­tiv­i­ty while un­der­min­ing brand in­tegri­ty.

“The broad­er crim­i­nal nexus is well recog­nised be­cause il­lic­it to­bac­co of­fers high po­ten­tial re­turns, is eas­i­ly trans­port­ed and may car­ry low­er per­ceived risks than oth­er forms of traf­fick­ing.”

Asked how this il­lic­it op­er­a­tion has af­fect­ed its busi­ness, WIT­CO stat­ed it cre­at­ed greater un­cer­tain­ty about in­vest­ment, dis­place­ment of le­gal sales, pres­sure on mar­ket share and brand val­ue, re­duced com­pet­i­tive­ness and even in­creased op­er­a­tional ex­pen­di­ture.

WIT­CO ad­mit­ted that the il­le­gal trade has placed sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure on its vol­umes, com­pet­i­tive­ness and prof­itabil­i­ty.

“We have had to make in­vest­ments in a brand which can be sold at a price to com­pete with the large price gap cre­at­ed by the ex­cise in­crease be­tween le­gal and il­le­gal, so while our vol­umes may have in­creased since then, the val­ue pool con­tin­ues to be erod­ed.”

A look at WIT­CO’s an­nu­al re­port showed that prof­it de­clined from 2023 to the cur­rent.

It dropped from 65 per cent to 48 per cent.

WIT­CO said that, based on pub­licly avail­able ship­ping da­ta, most of the il­le­gal cig­a­rettes are com­ing via Pana­ma.

WIT­CO iden­ti­fied one brand called Car­ni­val, which has a high pres­ence on the il­le­gal cig­a­rettes mar­ket, made by KT&G (Ko­re­an To­bac­co and Gin­seng).

The com­pa­ny be­lieves that “15 per cent of the mar­ket en­ters as il­le­gal an­nu­al­ly.”

It added il­le­gal cig­a­rettes have been seen in small gro­ceries and ped­dled by street ven­dors.

As such WIT­CO has called for a mul­ti-pronged ap­proach to deal with the il­lic­it mar­ket.

“Stronger and more con­sis­tent en­force­ment is need­ed. But it should fo­cus on dis­rupt­ing sup­ply and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works…not on­ly on seizures at the re­tail lev­el. The em­pha­sis should be on dis­man­tling the fi­nan­cial, im­por­ta­tion, stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works be­hind the trade.”