Australia is awash with illegal tobacco. This is the inside story of how the vast majority of cigarettes smoked in Australia find their way from the Dubai factories that make the Manchester brand to suburban retailers more than 12,000 kilometres away.The switch is done in broad daylight, right out in the open, in one of the busiest docks in Asia, the Jurong free port in Singapore.It takes three men about 20 minutes to shift more than 1000 cases of cigarettes from a container that has arrived from Dubai to one earmarked for a ship bound for Australia.The workers are paid about $1000 to make the transfer, which amounts to 10 million cigarettes – a job known in the smugglers’ trade as “restuffing”.New paperwork is created that turns the tobacco shipment into noodles, pasta, homewares, furniture or bedding.Sometimes it simply passes through in the same container it arrived in, after a paperwork switch known as “recutting”.ai2html:transfer-process; size: mediumIt’s a process repeated dozens of times each month in ports across the region, which is a key link in a chain that runs from the factories that make Manchester cigarettes in the United Arab Emirates to the illicit shops across in Australia, and feeds an almost insatiable demand for cut-price illicit tobacco.Shipping records for Manchester, obtained by this masthead, show more than 4.4 billion of the brand’s cigarettes were sent to Asian ports from Dubai between 2023 to 2025.The shipments were organised by UAE companies that obtain the cigarettes in bulk from intermediaries located only metres away from the factories that manufacture Manchesters.The transactions are all legal in the UAE, with the manufacturer selling to export companies that arrange the transport of the cigarettes out of the Jebel Ali Free Zone.Trucked down to the port in Jebel Ali, the cigarettes are loaded onto commercial container ships and marked for transport to ports in Singapore, Taiwan, China, Vietnam and Thailand.What happens next – how hundreds of these containers end up on ships headed for Australia and then into the nation’s tobacco shops – is the dirty little secret of the international illicit tobacco trade.This masthead has unravelled the scheme with intelligence and documents provided by more than a dozen sources in law enforcement, criminal intelligence, the tobacco industry and underworld with knowledge of the system. https://thearticlestack.com/interactive/modules/big-numbers/index.html?resizable=true&v=778&configUrl=https://thearticlestack.com/interactive/hub/configs/big-numbers/54353.json&v=0.9511857053260331; size: mediumIt’s an unprecedented look into how Australia has become one of the most lucrative illicit tobacco markets in the world and why the country has been plagued by a war for control of the multibillion-dollar tobacco trade, which has led to murders, shootings and more than 200 firebombings.paragraphtitle: The legal illegal cigaretteManchester has the unique characteristic of being legally manufactured but illegal to be sold in almost all parts of the world.Ted Leggett, a researcher with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said shipping records and intelligence from authorities in the Asia-Pacific region supported the idea that Manchesters were largely being exported for the Australian market, even if they were initially shipped to intermediary ports in Asia.Leggett, whose research on the illicit market in the region is funded by Australia’s Office of Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner, said while Manchesters can be found in some other countries in the region, nowhere does the brand enjoy the prominence that it has in Australia.“It makes no sense to ship thousands of tonnes of cigarettes to countries where they’re not being smoked,” Leggett said. “The place where you know its going to wind up in is Australia, because thats where your market is.”Federal law enforcement authorities know how serious a problem this multi-national transhipment line has become, but they have been blindsided by a major intelligence failure as the market grew at an unprecedented rate.In 2025, more than 2.5 billion cigarettes were intercepted and seized by the Australian Border Force (ABF), up almost 500 per cent from 423 million “sticks” five years earlier.https://thearticlestack.com/interactive/modules/multimedia-gallery/index.html?resizable=true&v=628&configUrl=https://thearticlestack.com/interactive/hub/configs/multimedia-gallery/54246.json&v=0.5480345695979322; size: mediumIndustry market intelligence says Manchester is now the top-selling cigarette – legal or illegal – in Australia.The Dubai-based cigarette conglomerate is also now under the influence of exiled Australian gangland boss Kazem “Kaz” Hamad, who has built a “vertically integrated transnational crime empire that controls the flood of illicit tobacco from manufacturing to retail.But the ABF does not track the brands of the illicit cigarettes it seizes or what countries the smuggled shipments come from, leaving the agency blind to the rise of Manchester.“The vast majority of illicit tobacco arrives from China, Hong Kong, Singapore and the UAE, however these locations might not be the true origin of the tobacco, noting many international shipments transit through these ports before arriving into Australia,” an ABF spokesperson said.“Illicit tobacco is a complex and multi-jurisdictional problem that requires a multi-faceted response to address the serious organised crime, health and public safety issues.”The Manchester shipping records, obtained independently by this masthead, show there is a trackable chain that extends from the factories making the cigarettes to their arrival onshore in Australia.The halfway mark for the journey are the secure ports and international transport systems overseen by half a dozen friendly or allied governments in Asia and a slew of freight forwarding businesses making a profit from the shipments.One of the most common refrains in law enforcement when it comes to combating illicit tobacco is a claim that the ABF works in “close co-operation” with international partners.It’s true, up to a point.There are various international liaison offices in places like the UAE and Singapore, and law enforcement in these jurisdictions do occasionally tip off Australian authorities about shipments.But the reality on the ground is that the trade is allowed to continue, virtually unhindered, by those same international partners.Tobacco manufacture and export is big business for the Emirates.The country is responsible for one-quarter of all illicit cigarettes sold globally, according to the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Centre at George Mason University in Virginia.One of the largest freight forwarding companies shipping Manchester around the world is the Orient Cargo Agency, a logistics firm owned in part by the royal family of the UAE, according to Manchester shipping records.Wilful blindness is a key part of keeping the chain alive. No questions are asked about why these shipping containers full of tobacco are being sent to destinations in Asia where it would be illegal to sell.https://thearticlestack.com/interactive/modules/imagebar-gallery/index.html?resizable=true&v=352&configUrl=https://thearticlestack.com/interactive/hub/configs/imagebar-gallery/54375.json&v=0.8280716619368552; size: largeThis reticence comes despite shipping documents for Manchester showing exports being organised by figures with known links to international smuggling syndicates and organised crime groups.This includes mass shipments – in the hundreds of millions of sticks of cigarettes – from export companies linked to the Melbourne-based Haddara crime family.The Haddaras dominated the illicit tobacco market trade for more than a decade before being forced out or co-opted by Hamad when he formed a new cartel in 2023.For authorities in intermediary countries where the cigarettes pass through, it also pays to look away.“The containers enter a free trade zone with the export declarations (from Dubai) declaring it as tobacco. Given it never officially entered Singapore and it stayed in the free trade zone, Singapore either doesnt have visibility or frankly doesn’t care,” said a former senior law enforcement source with knowledge of the international smuggling system.“Singapore has consistently stated that tobacco is not an illegal commodity and its Australias policy position on tax that creates the problem, a problem they [Singapore] are not going to intervene on and stop in their port.”The ports and free zones employ large numbers of workers who oversee massive volumes of cargo moving through the port under lax regulation. A fee is charged for every container in transit, which means there is no incentive to rock the boat, sources say.This is how Australia finds itself trying to stop an illegal product entering the country that has been legally made and shipped halfway across the world.paragraphtitle: Buy for $1, sell for $20With a packet of Manchester costing less than a dollar to buy in Dubai, the profits that can be reaped in Australia vastly outweigh almost any other market in the world.Australia’s policy of continually raising excise taxes on tobacco as a health policy has made it an extremely lucrative black market. Packets of Manchesters vary from from $12 to $25 depending on the shop location. A packet of legal cigarettes costs more than twice that amount.And it doesn’t take much product to actually make it into the country for the syndicates to make a steep profit.With a container load of Manchesters bought in Dubai for about $250,000, the product can be sold for between $7 million and $10 million through shops in Australia.The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission estimates only 1 in 30 containers need to slip past border authorities for the syndicates to make a profit.Organised crime groups are now estimated to control 75 per cent of the illicit tobacco market in Australia.https://thearticlestack.com/interactive/modules/big-numbers/index.html?resizable=true&v=769&configUrl=https://thearticlestack.com/interactive/hub/configs/big-numbers/54350.json&v=0.09237686466139228 size: mediumThe company that owns the Manchester United Kingdom brand, Adam International FZCO, did not respond to a request for comment when approached by this masthead.But a representative from the company told the ABC’s Four Corners last year that the Manchesters flooding Australia were not the responsibility of the company.“We are not responsible for any smuggling of cigarettes to any part of the world. We are doing all our business under the law of UAE. We are not responsible for what everyone does in the end.”It was also claimed by the company, to the ABC, that the Manchester brand cigarettes appearing in Australia were “fake”, counterfeit copies made in Cambodia and Vietnam.While knock-off cigarettes are a growing problem, multiple sources from the tobacco, intelligence and law enforcement sectors say the production levels at counterfeit factories in Cambodia and Vietnam simply couldn’t meet the scale of demand – or seizures – being experienced in Australia.Since Kazem Hamad launched the so-called tobacco war in mid-2023 and took control of vast swaths of the supply chain, including a stake in Manchester, the flow of cigarettes has dramatically increased, according to the shipping records.In October 2025, a record-setting 500 million Manchester cigarettes were packed into containers and sent to Asia – and onwards.Despite a gangland turf war and law enforcement crackdown on Australia’s maritime borders and in the shops, a packet of Manchester now goes for about $12 on the street – nearly half what it was three years ago – in a clear sign that the country is awash with cheap tobacco.Hamad was arrested by Iraqi authorities in mid-January after intelligence was provided by the Australian government. His current status in Iraq is unknown.But with the 41-year-old behind a “vertically integrated” criminal empire that stretches from the port of Dubai to Australia’s suburbs, he’s taking a clipping at every step.“Kaz’s got his own stores so it’s all profit,” an underworld source said.