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DET SUPT JASON KELLY, VICTORIA POLICE: Any tobacco store in Victoria at the moment should be on alert.THEO FOUKKARE, AUST. ASSN OF CONVENIENCE STORES CEO: It really is like the wild wild west.ELIAS CLURE: Millions are at stake over illegal tobacco – a bootleg industry people are prepared to kill for.ANTHONY RACELLE, FORMER TOBACCO STORE OWNER: There’s money to be made so, of course, the black market is going to thrive.
ELIAS CLURE: The stakes were raised earlier this month when reputed underworld figure Robert Issa was shot and killed by four masked hit men in a busy suburban shopping centre carpark.JASON KELLY: We are looking at any links to the illicit tobacco market and those particular murders. We have identified a number of non-fatal shootings and extortions and black mails and also arson attacks that we can link directly to organised crime.
ANTHONY RACELLE: We had over 200 customers a day, which sounds good but if you're only making $1 a packet, it's not a lot of money. When you think about it, over the course of a week, you might have served 1000 customers, you might make about $1,000.ELIAS CLURE: The head of the peak body for convenience stores Theo Foukkare believes the black market in Victoria is particularly attractive because no special license is required to sell tobacco in the state.
Legal cigarettes are more expensive to import, and the Commonwealth imposes a massive tax on the product which pushes the price up. The gangs mostly import from Asia and the Middle East and tobacco is often hidden in miscellaneous items like metal fence posts, thinking it can evade x-ray detection or in packages carrying niche foods.JASON KELLY: There’s substantial amounts of money being made by organised crime and it’s on a par with the illicit drug trade so therefore it’s very attractive and that’s the current environment we have.
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