Cigarette trafficking from clandestine factories to Île-de-France suburban train stations, Digi Mart USA News: Within a few years, the resale of low-priced cigarettes has left its Parisian strongholds for suburban and outer-ring train stations. Behind the street sellers, organized networks import counterfeits manufactured in Belgium, store them in suburban storage units and launder their earnings.
This report follows a story published by VL Média on November 3.
A pack sells for 5 to 6 euros, compared with 11 to 13 euros at a tobacconist. As early as February 2024, the Île-de-France tobacconists’ trade union had identified at least fifty such points of sale in the region.
Customs tobacco-related findings rose from about 15,500 in 2020 to 20,500 in 2025, or 56 per day. Speaking to Le Parisien on October 7, 2026, Nicolas Monnier, head of the customs office for combating trafficking and organized crime, said that “tobacco networks are gradually structuring themselves like drug networks.”
The exact size of the market remains disputed. Imperial Brands Seita, a subsidiary of a tobacco manufacturer, estimates counterfeits accounted for 15.3% of consumption in Île-de-France at the end of 2025, while the association Contre-Feu (formerly Alliance contre le tabac) disputes what it describes as an alarmist account promoted by industry.
In Paris, the trade remains concentrated in the northeast, from Barbès to rue Marx-Dormoy, nicknamed “Petit Kaboul,” where resale is largely controlled by Afghan sellers.
In the inner suburbs, Seine-Saint-Denis is particularly affected, from the Quatre-Chemins to the Saint-Denis station.
The phenomenon now reaches the outer ring: as many as about fifty sellers were counted in front of the Argenteuil station, and the Melun municipal police seized 15,453 packs between January 1, 2025 and September 1, 2026.
One point of sale generated large revenues: the Manouchian residence in Vitry-sur-Seine reportedly made 3,000 to 4,000 euros in daily turnover according to investigators, before it was dismantled in May 2024. Clashes have multiplied.
On August 31, 2024, about forty members of the Afghan community clashed on rue Marx-Dormoy, some armed with knives. In October 2024, a 24-year-old reseller was stabbed to death on the forecourt of the Saint-Denis station; control of that location had already motivated, a month earlier, an attempted murder of a rival seller in Épinay-sur-Seine.
Street sellers are only the last link in a three-tier chain: importation, often from Belgium, storage in units, and then distribution.
The margins are considerable: in June 2025, 715 cartons seized from a network in La Chapelle were worth 4,000 euros in Belgium and 40,000 euros on the street.
One Afghan network illustrates this: over five months it reportedly imported 2.6 tonnes of counterfeit Marlboro from Belgium, stored in units in Paris, Saint-Denis and Aulnay-sous-Bois, and four of its members were convicted in August 2025. In the same district, six men were charged in July 2026 with money laundering and tobacco smuggling; investigators suspect they reinvested street-sale proceeds in seven shops bought by one family, allegedly linked to the group “Afghan 2060” based in Antwerp.
Other networks, Moldovan, Turkish or Chinese, also handle importation and storage, as in Le Perray-en-Yvelines, where customs officers found 5.3 tonnes of counterfeits in a warehouse in March 2026.
Fake cigarettes are also manufactured in France. In December 2021, customs officers discovered in Poincy, near Meaux, the country’s first complete clandestine workshop.
A second was dismantled in September 2022. Five men will be tried over the first site from November 16 to 18, 2026 in Paris.
Other factories have since been dismantled in France, including two in 2025, according to customs.
Most production nonetheless takes place in Belgium, where Belgian customs dismantled a site in Ninove on September 9, 2026, its twelfth of the year. The JDD counts 62 factories closed since 2019 and cites a study by the firm WSPM attributing nearly 60% of counterfeits sold in France to Belgian workshops.
Ukrainian, Polish or Vietnamese workers reportedly operate there day and night, housed on site.
On the ground, police pressure shifts sellers without eliminating them: those arrested are quickly replaced. The real challenge lies upstream.
“We must map criminal organizations, target the revenues they generate, and no longer only seize the goods,” Nicolas Monnier urged in the same interview with Le Parisien. The trial in Poincy, in November, will show whether justice can reach those who organize the trade, not just those who carry it out.
