Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. pleaded guilty to charges involving smuggling of cigarettes in the early 1990s.
Earlier this week, two of Canada’s largest tobacco firms were handed a total $1.15 billion in criminal and civil penalties after pleading guilty to charges involving smuggling of cigarettes in the early 1990s. That’s not a whole lot different from the tax evasion that took down gangster chief Al Capone in the 1930s. Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. and Rothmans Benson & Hedges pleaded guilty to “aiding persons to sell and be in possession of tobacco manufactured in Canada that was not packed and was not stamped in conformity with the Excise Act,” the RCMP said. The scheme involved the shipment of contraband tobacco in Canada to locations in the U.S. and near the Canada-U.S. border between 1989 and 1994. It was delivered to black-market distributors who brought it back into Canada for illegal sales. That’s one way to get around the high taxes applied to the product – as long as you don’t get caught. If you do, however, it becomes a lot harder for the public to think of the corporation a...