“Philip Morris International intentionally and actively flooded the Algerian market with cheap cigarettes, knowing that a steady flow of these cigarettes would be resold in France,” Raoul Setrouk, president of MSIntelligence, told JDD, who assigned the American company in court in New York.
As a former employee of the American multinational Philip Morris International (PMI), the director of the Geneva-based research firm MSIntelligence (MSI), Raoul Setrouk, accuses PMI of organizing the global black market for cigarettes itself, including that of France from Algeria, reports the Sunday Journal (JDD).
In addition to Mr Setrouk who lodged a complaint in early November against the American company in New York, the environmentalist deputy François-Michel Lambert declared himself ready to bring PMI to French justice, if the evidence provided by the director of MSI s turned out to be solid.
A whole section of world traffic “concerns France”
The JDD which claims to have consulted the file of the complaint lodged by Raoul Setrouk explains that “over the course of the presentation of the commercial dispute, it is a system of global contraband which seems to be revealed”. “And a whole part of this picture concerns France”.
In a statement to the media, the president of MSI assured that “PMI intentionally and actively flooded the Algerian market with cheap cigarettes, knowing that a steady stream of these cigarettes would be resold in France”.
These cigarettes “smuggled across the Mediterranean” represent 4.5% of the black market in France, causing an estimated tax loss of more than 400 million euros per year, he said.
PMI reacts
Raoul Setrouk is demanding a sum of 40 million euros from PMI, which he accuses of “theft of intellectual property followed by unfair competition”.
In response to a question from the JDD, the PMI company stated that “the lawsuits have been initiated ‘improperly’ and are based on ‘unfounded allegations'”. While denying any “participation in an illegal parallel trade”, the multinational explained that “the sole purpose of these accusations is to try to discredit PMI by forcing our company to a monetary settlement”.
Towards filing a complaint in France?
After learning of the complaint filed in New York by the director of MSI against PMI, the environmentalist deputy François-Michel Lambert sent a written question to the government on November 24 to draw its attention to this affair, reports the JDD.
“The elements seem very solid, even if no material element has yet filtered,” he explained, stressing that “if evidence came to support them, it would confirm the existence of knowingly organized trafficking “.
If the American justice, which imposed January 4 as the last deadline granted to PMI to file its counter-arguments to the complaint of Raoul Setrouk, decides to prosecute Philip Morris International, then M.Lambert affirmed that he “was going to file his side a complaint in France ”.
“The damage to health is considerable, as are the tax losses, which could rise to five billion euros each year,” he lamented, denouncing “a real inertia of the State and a lack of political will, for years ”.
