Il ruolo dell'organizzazione criminale nel contrasto al traffico di tabacchi lavorati esteri

This article concerns the study of the reasons that found the Italian regulations of smuggling of foreign manufactured tobacco products, with the purpose to assess its reasonableness and efficacy. The norms set by articles 291 bis, ter and quarter of the Consolidated Customs Law Act (Testo Unico delle Leggi Doganali) is a normative unicum in the European landscape due to the detail and rigour of its sanctions and precisely because of this, it attracts the interpreters’ interest. Such peculiarity finds its reason of existence in the need to contrast the organised crime in the sector, need that permeates the cited norms to such an extent that it also reverberates on the individual offence, structured with features that make it more similar to illegal trafficking than proper smuggling. The rigour of the sanctions can result in a useless sacrifice of the safeguards of the rights of individual offenders if we consider the manifestations of the criminal phenomenon, capable of insinuating itself within the folds of the double punitive track, thus circumventing the criminal sanction. For this reason, in conclusion, we suggest a different usage of the notion of criminal association, similar to those used in neighbouring jurisdictions, capable of preserving the extrema ratio safeguards, while combining them with an effective regulation against the offences subject of this study.