With the Philippines and Malaysia emerging as central nodes in Asia Pacific’s transnational illicit tobacco trade, Japan Tobacco International (JTI) has urged Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries to establish a regional body to combat these illicit transactions.
Valentin Dinca, regional director at JTI Anti-Illicit Trade Operations, said the dedicated regional body should, among others, oversee customs collaboration, swift intelligence exchange and cargo verification along maritime routes as well as utilize artificial intelligence, or AI tools.
Dinca said that despite ongoing efforts to curb illegal tobacco trade across the region, dismantling organized crimes involves collective action among Southeast Asian countries.
‘But if you talk about [illegal tobacco] trade, it’s not just a method that requires acting within one jurisdiction simply because it is cross-border by nature. The next victory against organized criminality will come from connecting this type of action across the entire Southeast Asia region,’ Dinca said in a press briefing.
‘Maybe the only thing that is missing is the regional actual coordination that would definitely support, to track all these shipments rather than doing in an isolated way,’ Dinca told visiting Filipino journalists.
Shaiful Mahpar, director for corporate affairs and communications at JTI Philippines, said the Philippines, for instance, is one of the few Asean countries with strict compliance laws.
Mahpar said under Philippine law, manufacturers are prohibited from exporting cigarettes without verifying compliance with the destination country’s regulations and health warnings.