Business in Zugdidi Has No Boarders

Business in Zugdidi Has No Boarders

Despite a tough fight put up by the Financial Police against smuggling in the Samegrelo Region, cigarettes taxed in Russia and Abkhazia are being sold in the majority of shops in Zugdidi. A majority of shopkeepers state that purchasing cigarettes from smugglers is no challenge; what is more, it is cheaper to do so. Because of the low prices, customers prefer to buy smuggled cigarettes.

“Neither buying nor selling cigarettes without any excise is a challenge. My boss buys the cigarettes from the same person who transits them from Abkhazia. No one came here to stop this”, says a sales person, Nata D.  

Despite several raids by the Financial Police in the Zugdidi Central Market, you can easily find smuggled cigarettes of Russian and Abkhazian origin there. 

The brand of smuggled cigarettes, which cost only one lari are the most popular amongst the customers. The population prefers the one-lari-cigarettes to more expensive ones. “These cigarettes are cheaper; you cannot get any other ones that are less then two laris. I can afford only these cigarettes. And what’s more, what is the difference between being killed by good cigarettes or bad ones?” asks temporarily unemployed citizen, Gizo Adamia.

The smokers consider information spread about the smuggled cigarettes being radioactive to be false, labeling it as mere rumors - they just keep on smoking.

The main route of smuggled cigarettes from the Gali region is through the Georgia-Abkhazia border and so called ‘Napati Poni’ - those villages near the Zugdidi region such as Rukhi, Orsantiasa and Khurcha. Hundreds of boxes of cigarettes pass through this place at different times and under different circumstances. We became witnesses to one incidence quite by chance. An inhabitant of the Gali region, Sharim L., does not try to hide that he is importing cigarettes from Abkhazia. “The only income my family gets is from transiting the cigarettes from Abkhazia. What else shall I do? I pay Russians and Abkhaz there, and here, I pay Georgians. I make a slight profit. Once I was fined and they confiscated three boxes of ‘Iava’ cigarettes. I hardly managed to pay my debts because the Abkhazians are not interested in my profits or losses”, says Mr. Sharim.

A lot of people living in the conflict zone are involved in smuggling. However, only ‘small smugglers’ are ‘trapped’ by the financial police, despite their being many large scale smugglers operating on the black market.

Methods of deception and smuggling are changed in response to methods used by the government to fight the smuggling. Different goods are hidden in sacks of nuts or flour. Sometimes brave smugglers swim across the Enguri River. Whilst the government is searches for the effective ways to fight the smuggling, a number of cases have been started at the Zugdidi Court to prosecute smuggling.

Dazmir Sherozia, the prosecutor at the Zugdidi Regional Court, states that the Regional Court hears about ten or fifteen cases concerning smuggling each week. The majority of smugglers are women, who end up in prison several times for the similar offences. “The smugglers are rarely released on bail because the majority of the accused are internally displaced people who cannot afford to pay the bail. Most of the smugglers are put in jail for ten or fifteen days and given an administrative punishment. Later, they are charged again and punished with another term of imprisonment for several days. I should mention that most of the violators are women who have small kids”, says Dazmir Sherozia.

What happens to the confiscated contraband is often not clear. The Chief of the Financial Police in the Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti Region, Giorgi Guguchia, assures that smuggled cigarettes are not sold in the shops. According to him, the only challenging place is the central market and the area nearby, since they cannot manage to ban their sale there. “Our mobile groups check the place every day, thus I know exactly what is happening there. As for the confiscated contraband, it is destroyed by the police after the court decision”, states Giorgi Guguchia.

Some people believe that the confiscated contraband ends up lining the pockets of the Financial Police.

In any case, the smuggling in the conflict region is flourishing. On the one hand, the smuggling of low-quality cigarettes only feeds the self-proclaimed country of Abkhazia as well as Russia. On the other hand, the smugglers living in Georgia manage to support their families. One can easily buy cigarettes taxed in Russia or Abkhazia in Georgia. This only goes to prove that business has no borders.

Maia Gubeladze from Zugdidi