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Investigation

The Tobacco Underground is a project of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a program of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington DC. It was done in cooperation with Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and OCCRP journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

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Ukraine’s ‘Lost’ Cigarettes Flood Europe
The hang glider pilot insisted it was a routine flight, and that strong winds had blown him over the border from Hungary into Ukraine. But the man arrested by Ukrainian authorities last July, with his flight suit and night-vision gear, looked suspiciously like other hang-gliding smugglers along the border — smugglers who take off from Ukraine, fly into Hungary, and each drop as much as 100 cartons of contraband cigarettes.
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“My little cat ... I’m going crazy without you ... You have repeatedly betrayed me, I think ... Little cat, when are you coming? ... I love you, little cat.” On Jan. 4, 2001, Dušanka Jeknić, representative of the Montenegrin trade mission in Milan, Italy, was speaking on the phone at her home in the southwest of the city. Milo Đukanović, at that time president of Montenegro, was calling from the capital Podgorica.
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The Central Bank of Montenegro is taking the unusual step of assigning a special auditor to begin looking next month into the workings of the country’s second largest bank, The First Bank, which is controlled by Prime Minister Milo Đukanović, his relatives and a close friend.
Ukraine’s ‘Lost’ Cigarettes Flood Europe
The hang glider pilot insisted it was a routine flight, and that strong winds had blown him over the border from Hungary into Ukraine. But the man arrested by Ukrainian authorities last July, with his flight suit and night-vision gear, looked suspiciously like other hang-gliding smugglers along the border — smugglers who take off from Ukraine, fly into Hungary, and each drop as much as 100 cartons of contraband cigarettes.
The Montenegro Connection
“My little cat ... I’m going crazy without you ... You have repeatedly betrayed me, I think ... Little cat, when are you coming? ... I love you, little cat.” On Jan. 4, 2001, Dušanka Jeknić, representative of the Montenegrin trade mission in Milan, Italy, was speaking on the phone at her home in the southwest of the city. Milo Đukanović, at that time president of Montenegro, was calling from the capital Podgorica.
Montenegro's Central Bank Orders Special Audit
The Central Bank of Montenegro is taking the unusual step of assigning a special auditor to begin looking next month into the workings of the country’s second largest bank, The First Bank, which is controlled by Prime Minister Milo Đukanović, his relatives and a close friend.
Tobacco Underground
See the project

Reported by

ICIJ and OCCRP
October 20th, 2008

The Tobacco Underground is a project of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a program of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington DC. It was done in cooperation with Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and OCCRP journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. In addition, journalists in Brazil, Belgium, Canada, China, Italy, Paraguay and the UK participated.

It was funded by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health.

ICIJ has created an interactive website with all of its stories, documents, maps and more information. It can be found at Public Integrity.

OCCRP completed a project called Tobacco Roads earlier this year that looked at smuggling in the Balkans.