Greece misses out on billions in taxes from tobacco smuggling

The Greek state missed out on total taxes of 2.535 billion euros over the previous seven years (from 2008 to 2014) due to cigarette smuggling, according to an annual European survey on illegal tobacco trading by KPMG.

Last year alone cigarette smuggling grew by 2.8 percentage points of the market to account for 20.6 percent of domestic tobacco transactions.

With a total of 4.4 billion smuggled cigarettes last year, Grece ranked fifth among all European Union members.

The vast majority of illegal cigarettes are the so-called ?illicit whites,? which last year increased by 12 percent from 2013.