The Ministry of Finance knows how illegal tobacco products move around and where it comes from. The government thinks that much more tobacco than is actually consumed is being sold to Gibraltar and Andorra, but winding up in Spain under the radar and untaxed.
Their suspicions are focused on small companies that have a small market share of tobacco sales but could account for more than 36% of the illegal trafficking.
Spain has UN-approved remedies to revoke a manufacturer's license if it is involved in fraud. Finance should use them in order to recoup the tax revenues that they are losing to illicit tobacco sales, a figure estimated at a billion euros per year.
