Eight years after warning that Victorians were afraid to go to restaurants,the opposition leader said they felt unsafe going to the shops as criminal incidents rose by 20 per cent in 12 months.
Fire bombings and ram raids on stores selling illegal cigarettes are spreading as governments play a game of “whack-a-mole” on the lucrative market.
The “Kaz tax” is a protection payment extorted from tobacconists allowing them to sell illicit cigarettes smuggled into Victoria.
Police have released an image of a suspect in the underworld-linked house fire that killed a 27-year-old burlesque performer in Melbourne earlier this year.
The tobacco black market is thriving and,as senior economics correspondent Shane Wright tells The Morning Edition podcast,that’s creating problems for all Australians.
Alcohol levies are raising more money for the budget than cigarettes as documents reveal Treasury was unprepared for the financial fallout from vaping and black market tobacco.
Alerts circulated across state and federal agencies warned of large-scale tobacco smuggling into Australia,including some that may have been tacitly supported by Chinese government officials.
Police say Katie Tangey’s death was entirely predictable as violent organised crime gangs fought their tobacco turf war.
A woman who died trapped in a burning home became the first civilian fatality in the gangland war over control of Melbourne’s illicit tobacco trade.
Criminal syndicates have called a truce over tobacco shops in one area of Melbourne as experts declare our crime-fighting strategy a failure that only a radical rethink can fix.