Philip Morris International donates two drones worth nearly 700,000 USD to the Border Police

Philip Morris International (PMI), a leading international company in the tobacco industry, is funding the purchase of two UAS (unmanned aircraft system) drones worth nearly 700,000 dollars, thereby complementing the surveillance technology used by the Romanian Border Police to combat smuggling.

Romania has over 2,000 km of the European Union’s external border, and there are significant portions in mountainous and wooded areas where border surveillance is difficult. With the help of the drones funded through the PMI Impact program, over 500 km of border subjected to continuous attempts at fraudulent crossing with significant quantities of contraband products will be more easily monitored.

The acquisition of the new surveillance equipment is the result of the third round of funding from the PMI IMPACT program, a global initiative that supports projects aimed at combating illicit trade and its negative consequences. The overall objective of the project is to enhance the Romanian authorities’ capacity to detect smuggling at the EU’s external borders to identify and dismantle criminal networks.

“For PMI, eliminating illicit trade in all its forms remains a top priority because it undermines our efforts to build a smoke-free future. Today we are honored to donate two state-of-the-art drones worth nearly 700,000 dollars to the Border Police. They will be used in the hard-to-reach border areas to combat illicit trafficking of products, including cigarettes. The partnership between major industry companies and control authorities has led to a 54% decrease in illicit trade over the last 8 years. However, the trend we are observing in 2024 is a worrying one: illicit trade has increased by 27% in the last two months, a sign that we must never let our guard down in combating this criminal phenomenon. In this context, you can count on Philip Morris Romania to remain a reliable partner to the Romanian state. It is in everyone’s interest to protect legal trade, which supports the Romanian state budget through taxes and duties,” said Dragoș Bucurenci, Director External Affairs, Philip Morris Romania.

Read more about

Philip Morris Romania Recognized as Top Employer for the Tenth Consecutive Year

read more

Since 2016, when the PMI IMPACT project was launched, the illicit cigarette market has seen a downward trend, which proves that the sustained and joint efforts of the authorities in partnership with the business environment can lead to a positive change in combating illicit traffic. However, the trend in 2024 is not a positive one, and the most recent figures show a 27% increase in the last two months.

“The Romanian Border Police is permanently involved in actions carried out along the lines of combating the trafficking of contraband products, and the results obtained have been very good. Thus, in the first three months of the year, as a result of the sustained efforts of the border police, approximately 600,000 cigarette packs, worth over 13 million lei, were seized. Also, in the first quarter, the border police confiscated another 6,200 kg of loose tobacco and 47 kg of hookah tobacco. The Border Police will continue to be at the forefront of combating smuggling, with cigarettes being among the most trafficked products at the country’s borders. In the fight against this criminal phenomenon, we enjoy the support of the other structures within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as that of the institutional partners with whom we collaborate to find the best solutions, both from an organizational and operational point of view, and from a technical perspective,” said the general inspector of the Border Police, police commissioner Cornel-Laurian STOICA.”

In the first and second rounds of funding, PMI supported through the global PMI IMPACT initiative, projects that aimed at various activities with a lasting impact on illicit trade:

• Research programs to understand the illicit phenomenon;
• Implementation of educational initiatives to improve public awareness;
• Funding the development of technological solutions to facilitate actions against illicit trade;
• PMI has made available 100 million dollars to fund three rounds of projects against illicit trade;
• Through PMI IMPACT, 53 million dollars have been allocated so far for the implementation of 71 projects in 37 countries.

Through PMI Impact, the South-East European Law Enforcement Center (S.E.L.E.C) benefited from the first round of PMI IMPACT funding worth over 1,500,000 dollars. S.E.L.E.C is the only organization in Southeast Europe that operates in the field of combating transborder crime at the operational level, and which brings together control authorities from the 11 member states, including our country.

A second round of funding worth over 1,200,000 dollars was aimed at the partnership with the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police. This led to the acquisition of patrolling and illicit tobacco detection equipment, as well as local training and coordination activities, with the aim of dismantling the smuggling criminal networks at the borders with Ukraine, Moldova, and Serbia. So far, in Romania, over 3,300,000 dollars have been invested in financing projects within PMI IMPACT.