Australia's illicit tobacco trade has exploded into one of the nation's most violent and fastest-growing criminal markets, costing $4 billion in the 2023-24 financial year and helping push the total economic toll of organised crime to a record $82.3 billion.

Twin reports from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) and the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) reveal the economic impact of serious and organised crime jumped $13.6 billion in 12 months, fuelled by factors such as soaring black-market tobacco sales and increasingly brazen violence linked to turf wars.

Men charged over seizure of illicit tobacco

Two Perth brothers are charged after the seizure of more than four million cigarettes, around 50,500 vapes and almost 900 kilograms of loose-leaf tobacco.

The $4

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