size: mediumIts a process repeated dozens of times each month in ports across the region, which is a key link in a chain that runs from the factories that make Manchester cigarettes in the United Arab Emirates to the illicit shops across in Australia, and feeds an almost insatiable demand for cut-price illicit tobacco.Shipping records for Manchester, obtained by this masthead, show more than 4.4 billion of the brands cigarettes were sent to Asian ports from Dubai between 2023 to 2025.The shipments were organised by UAE companies that obtain the cigarettes in bulk from intermediaries located only metres away from the factories that manufacture Manchesters.The transactions are all legal in the UAE, with the manufacturer selling to export companies that arrange the transport of the cigarettes out of the Jebel Ali Free Zone.Trucked down to the port in Jebel Ali, the cigarettes are loaded onto commercial container ships and marked for transport to ports in Singapore, Taiwan, China, Vietnam and Thailand.What happens next how hundreds of these containers end up on ships headed for Australia and then into the nations tobacco shops is the dirty little secret of the international illicit tobacco trade.This masthead has unravelled the scheme with intelligence and documents provided by more than a dozen sources in law enforcement, criminal intelligence, the tobacco industry and underworld with knowledge of the system
If you smoke more than 25 cigarettes a day, use the 4 mg lozenge
The projectionist would start the incoming projector with the changeover douser (shutter) closed as the first mark (the motor cue) appeared
He tries to quit but always, always fails
