The Sindh High Court in Pakistan has reversed a stay order imposed earlier this year on a licence agreement issued by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for a track and trace system on local and imported tobacco, cement, sugar and fertiliser.

In this article, we examine the illicit tobacco trade in Australia and how it is continuing to evolve. We look at what continues to drive smokers to seek illicit tobacco, but also what criminal networks did when looking to source and traffic illicit tobacco products into Australia during the pandemic.

Bahrain’s National Bureau for Revenue (NBR) and the General Tax Authority (GTA) of Qatar have recently announced the signature of new contracts with De La Rue for the provision of national digital tax stamp and traceability programmes on a number of excise goods.

It is no secret that the world, and the Latin American region in particular, has faced many negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

KPMG’s annual study of the illicit trade in tobacco in Europe is a robust and well-established study of illicit trade trends in Europe since its inception in 2006.

The first draft of a long-anticipated US senate bill to federally legalise marijuana has been released. While cannabis is legal for medical or adult-use in 36 US states and four territories, at federal level it is still classified as an illegal, Schedule I drug.

The recent news that Nigeria is considering the introduction of excise tax on telecommunication airtime charges, in a bid to raise additional revenues, has prompted stakeholders to question whether excise taxes are actually appropriate for this sector.

SICPA’s latest generation of handheld detection solutions, SICPAGUARD® HDSense – which is used for checking product authenticity in the field – has been recognised with a 2021 Red Dot Design Award.

OpSec Security has launched OpSec® SmartCheck, a proprietary, smartphoneenabled solution that uses artificial intelligence to validate optically variable devices (OVDs).

The German company ZEISER, which provides impact and non-impact serialisation solutions and services to the security printing industry, has acquired the track and trace software solutions of Inspectron, a global technology provider of document inspection and track and trace systems for security printers.

When South Africa banned the sale of all alcohol and tobacco in early 2020, the intent was clear and noble: free up hospital beds so they would be available for COVID patients – and reduce tobacco consumption while a respiratory disease is ravaging the country.

Gleitsmann Security Inks (GSI) has launched what it terms the ‘world’s first traffic light for banknotes’, in the form of mouveGSI, a unique security feature that will also help safeguard security documents such as tax stamps using luminescent colour effects.

Over the past few months, a number of interesting tenders for tax stamps and track and trace systems have been issued by various revenue authorities across the world. Most of these tenders are characterised by two things: 1) their need for extensive systems that cover physical tax stamps, secure track and trace, and even production line monitoring; 2) their need for systems that cover a wide range of products.

Following the 2019 launch of its tax stamp and traceability programme on locally manufactured and imported beer, spirits, wine, soda, mineral water and tobacco products, the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has far exceeded some of the key performance targets set for the programme.

In April, Burkina Faso’s Ministry of Industry and Trade welcomed a delegation of public and private sector officials from its West African neighbour Mali, who were seeking to draw inspiration from Burkina Faso’s experience in tobacco product traceability.

In France and the UK, there have been recent news stories of cigarette packs identified in the market as illicit because they were all carrying the same ID number (when this number should in fact be unique to each pack). What was not mentioned in these reports, however, was whether or not the packs were carrying authentication labels, which they are obliged to do under the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD).

The call for papers for Optical & Digital Document Security™ (ODDS) conference, the new security technology ‘super-event’, is now available from the event website. Organised by Reconnaissance International, this conference – to be held in Vienna, Austria, 17-19 January 2022 – brings together Reconnaissance’s two successful technical conferences to cover the key security and protection topics that have become more pressing in our digital age.

The news of the untimely demise of Mr U K Gupta has left the Authentication Solution Providers’ Association (ASPA) family and the entire authentication industry in shock.

According to media website dawn.com, there are gaps in the picture with regard to The World Health Organisation’s award to Pakistan for its anti-tobacco efforts.

The growth of informal economic activity has become a challenge throughout the Latin American region. To address this, the Swiss-Chilean Chamber of Commerce recently held a webinar to discuss the challenges of informality (in employment, government, taxation), as well as the actions that policymakers, in the region and elsewhere, could take to halt an increasing trend resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.