GREAT "RACKET."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 46, 23 February 1935, Page 4 (Supplement)

GREAT "RACKET."

SMUGGLING IN BRITAIN. TREMENDOUS GROWTH. 3300 CAPTURES LAST YEAR. Smuggling into Britain is developing into a gigantic "racket" that is menacing both the revenue* and the legitimate trader. Tobacco and saccharine are going into the country in brick boats, dope and diamonds in turkeys, and contraband frocks and expensive lingerie arc being taken over from Paris by women who act as couriers for wholesale traffickers. "Our black list," a Customs officer told the "Daily Herald," "reads like a chapter from the peerage." Three thousand three hundred smugglers were caught last year, and the anti-smuggling staff of the Customs Department has been increased to 12,000 to tighten up the network and stamp out tlie traffic. Hiflh Stakes Made Worth While. Penalties of £20,200 —or £5000 more than in the previous year—were recovered from the people convicted, the number of whom was up by a hundred. But the penalties recovered were only a trifle of those imposed. A sixty-year-old law, which fixes the maximum sentence for smuggling at six months' imprisonment, is making it worth while to play for high Btakes. A heavy cargo of contraband means big profits if successfully run.

If the runners are caught, it does not matter whether there is 501b or 10001b of tobacco aboard—the sentence is likely to be the same. »

The modern smugglers arc a different type from the sinister figures of the rumbarrel and secret cave.

They are stylish and very often titled women, or adventurous get-rieh-quiek men with fust motor boats, yachts and aeroplanes, and with powerful motor cars and lorries to rush the smuggled goods from the lonely creeks on the east and south coasts.

It is known that in the, very heart of London there is a factory (and there must be more) which is engaged in manufacturing cigarettes largely from contraband tobacco. Fashionable "Couriers." Also, that several West End shops dealing in expensive dresses, subject to heavy duty, replenish their stocks, largely and frequently, with frocks smuggled in from Paris by their fashionable "couriers." The preventive officers, whose job it is to «top smuggling, are hampered by the thousands of new duties they have to administer since the general tariff came into operation, and by the existence of the 60-year-o!d law on sentences. Tn a case brought before a Portsmouth Police Court a few months ago penalties totalling £100,000 were imposed on the ringleaders of a wholesale racket, but as tliey knew they could only be "sent down" for six months, they naturally chose to go to prison instead of paying the money. The preventive officers who search the luggage at Folkestone and Dover also have to search all the ships, however big or small, which come into port, and in addition they have to rush down the coast to intercept any suspected craft. They have their hands full with the "Smart-Aliek Smugglers," who use the channel boats..

The activities of these have led to (he extension of the elaborate espionage system and co-operation between the special inquiry men of the British and Continental Customs services.

The black list is an international one. Known smugglers and suspects are as familiar to the French and other Continental preventive officers as they are to the British.

Customs spies are stationed in the Paris fashion houses to watch for the women who make a regular traffic in expensive, heavily taxed frocks. They are also in the hotels, on the trains, and on the boats. They Know Him. The practised eye can spot the "spy." A traveller, indistinguishable from the usual, will step off the boat with his cases. He will plank them down behind someone in the crush at the search tables. The preventive officer will glance up, catch the imperceptible sign, and the person in front will have his luggage searched and probed and he himself will bo escorted to the search room and examined. A dodge familiar to the Customs is the one by which women try to pretend that their Paris model frock %as bought in Britain. The tab of a British dressmaker is substituted for the French one, but the officers know the thread used by every fashion house, and can by examination distinguish the gums used on the tabs if they are stuck on. Diamonds In Birds. Christmas is a particularly anxious time for the smuggler catchers. The innocentlooking Christmas goods may contain costly contraband. Cocaine and heroin have beeu found to be used as "stuffing" for imported poultry. The crops of birds have also been used as the hiding plaoc for smuggled gems and jewellery. The birds are "fed on the gems and killed immediately. Then they are posted to some confederate in this country, who finds that his "Christmas dinner" i« worth hundreds or even thousands of pounds. But the chief anxiety is the "running" along the coast. Ships are loaded with tobacco or saccharine at Antwerp or Rotterdam, but they also take on board a cargo of bricks. As a brick boat they make their way towards the English coast. Then in the night they make a dash for the creeks around Portsmouth or in Essex. Lorries are waiting, and the contraband is rushed in the darkness to London, to appear as nondescript cigarettes, or in supplies to the cut-price sweet shops and cut-price chemists.