Tobacco insider: Manufacturer profit gorging on taxpayers, smokers via SA's cigarette ban

For SA's cigarette manufacturers, Covid-19 has been like all their Christmases arriving together. Industry insider and self-confessed smuggler Azeem Carim explains how the SA government's lockdown-enforced ban on cigarette sales has generated a massive payday at taxpayers' expense. It's engineered through "ghost exports" - cigarette makers supposedly producing for sale outside SA borders, but feeding into the local market where excise duties are avoided and profits boosted by massive price hikes. In this interview, instigated by Carim's Right of Reply to yesterday's with Yusuf Kajee, he exposes a dirty industry where players use "connections" at border posts, in political parties and within SARS itself to generate super profits. Carim also has more than a few bones to pick with Kajee, claiming his company was hijacked via his former partner's "connections" at CIPRO - and alleging what Kajee told us about Amalgamated Tobacco Manufacturers is pure fiction.