Smuggling and the Pig Carousel
Rorie Smith has been exploring the exotic multi-million pound smuggling rackets, from pigs to Mercedes and from grain to spare parts for lorries
THERE'S a file that thick flying between Belfast and Dublin on your man" said the Southern customs officer, displaying a two-inch gap between his thumb and index finger.
"Your man" is one of the larger cross border smugglers. At the last count he owned a house worth £70,000, a brand new BMW, two farms, a half share in a hotel, a pub, butcher shop, and a small iron foundry. And while he got his start on the car side of the smuggling business there is little doubt that he made his real money on the most well known of all the smuggling rackets, the famous pig carousel.
In the period between early spring 1976 and the autumn of the same year, pigs were being wheeled round and round the border until they were dizzy. There was an EEC subsidy to be gained from exporting pigs North. The loophole was that this subsidy was available every time the pigs went North. Consequently, the pigs were going North, collecting the subsidy, being smuggled South and then being sent back North to collect the subsidy once again.
One smuggler claimed instances where the same set of pigs went through the border ten times. A Northern customs official said that at the time it was possible to rent a lorry plus pigs for £200 a day ir Newry.
Department of Agriculture officials ir the South said that during the period wher the carousel was working at its best the) were recording as many pigs being export ed in one month to the North as the) would normally record in a year.
The Northern officials finally put an ene I to it by demanding documentation t< II prove that the pigs, once they had com I through to get their subsidy, had been slaughtered, thus ensuring they couldn' go round a second time.
This has supposed to have put a stopper to it though some Southern customs men have indicated recently that they are lookking into the possibility of this documentaation being evaded and the carousel, in a smaller way, being started up again.
There was also a cattle carousel in operaation as there was a similar EEC subsidy to be picked up for exporting cattle to the North. Working from late 1976 to midd1977 it was on a smaller scale than the pig operation, as the cattle, when they went North, had to have their ears punched while the pigs only had to have their ears tagged. It is obviously easier to remove a tag than to remove a hole.
The myth and legend that has grown up surrounding the carousel has reached reemarkable proportions. On one occasion, according to a man who claims he got it straight "from the customs officer's mouth," a truck load of cattle was passing by a particular Southern customs post and the driver was inside seeing to the documentation. The officer could hear the sounds of cattle in the truck. He was just about to let the cattle on their way when he decided he would take a look inside the waggon and found to his surprise its only occupant a tape recorder emitting cattleelike noises ...
At last, the subsidy was taken off the cattle going North and that put an end to the carousel. Although pig and cattle men were the main carousel beneficiaries, there is still some grain carouselling round the border according to both IF A and customs officials.
Customs people say they are also looking at the possibility of a sugar carousel being set up, with the sugar coming from Sligo doing a couple of turns around the border and finally ending up in the North.
The day of the carousel is largely over but there is still money to be made elsewhere in the cross border smuggling game.
FROM conversations North and South with smugglers, farmers, retailers, customs, customs men, government officials, and representatives of agriicultural and retail bodies it has been possible to ascertain the following:
That on the agricultural side, grain, pigs, a small amount of beef and bacon, and, earlier in the year, milk and potatoes make up the bulk of the trade. On the non-agricultural side, cars, trucks, and parts for both make up a large proportion of the trade while luxury electrical goods such as colour TVs, music centres, and transistor radios are boom items.
Aside from cigarettes and some bacon, most of the trade, except during the war, has been from North to South. Drugs, banned literature, carrots, whiskey, bicycles, tyres, contraceptives, and tea have all found their way South at one time or another.
Statistics issued by the Revenue Commmisioners in the South indicate that in the first six months of this year, they seized goods worth approximately £335,000. A breakdown of these figures indicates that vehicles and vehicular parts lead the
figures with 78 seizures valued at £166,000. There have been 20 cattle and beef seizures worth £53,000. "Other agricultural produce" is responsible for 25 seizures worth £27 ,000. In their rniscelllaneous "other category", the Southern Revenue Commissioners place 79 seizures, valued at £89,000.
ONE of the major transistor radio reetailers in the South estimated that as much as 20 percent of the luxury electrical goods market has been taken over by smuggled goods. He said he expected an increase in the smuggled trade due to increasing demand.
An eight percent VAT in the North compared to 40 percent in the South is what makes the trade worthwhile.
The practice of Southerners who live near the border buying a colour TV in the North and slipping it into the boot to bring it back across undeclared is widespread, customs, smugglers, and retailers said.
It is apparently so widespread, accordding ~to customs, that on one occasion last year they even found a Monaghan Guard bringing a colour TV across undeclared. According to the customs men this strained relations between customs and guards 'for some time. Monaghan Guard authorities admit the incident but say that as they never received a written statement on it from the customs they could take no action.
On the more professional side, one 'smuggler says that lots of up to 100 brand name colour TVs are being smuggled across in trucks for a profit of between 20 and 40 percent. Another smuggler says that there are no middlemen in the luxury electrical market, the smugglers selling straight to the shops.
They also use a variety of ways to slip I their goods down South. Earlier this year one man was caught with approximately £25,000 worth of colour TVs at Dundalk, customs men said. They claimed that he had simply underdeclared the number he was bringing in.
According to a Dundalk retailer, another favourite trick is for TVs to be bought new in the North, made to appear used and then brought in as second hand goods, thus paying less duty.
Dundalk retailers told of a hustle where goods are exported out of the North legally, thus gaining the VAT export rebate, but before they reach the " Southern customs post they are slipped off on a side road and smuggled into the I south. They then benefit oath from the 'Northern export rebate and the evasion of the Southern VAT.
But as Southern customs men say they know nothing about it and the Northern I men refuse comment, it is difficult to I know if that hustle really works.
Music centres, radio, record deck, and tape cassette all rolled into one, are also big items according to another smuggler. He says he buys his units in Birmingham or London. Having slipped them over by either Liverpool- Belfast or StranraerrI Larne and taken them to the border by truck, he slips them across the border near Belcoo at a lake which is bisected by the border. He says that he pays the landdowner a backhander for the use of his land and takes the music centres on a fishing boat which he has legitimately' hired. He , has a truck waiting on the other side and reckons to make £100 per music centre, with the best trade being around Christtmas time. He said he sells direct to the shops.
The professionals, according to the i smugglers and the customs men, each i bring in on the average one car or truck a week. They drive the car across legally and either buy a set of comparable plates and a log book or an entire wreck from a garage and make the swop. Customs and smuggglers agree that the plates and book sell for approximately £20. A combination of VAT excise duty and customs duty makes the car worth 45 percent more in the South. One smuggler estimated that he would make up to £2,000 on a year-old Mercedes and another says that there should be about a £1,000 profit on the average' family car. The cars, the smugglers say, are generally bought in England where they are cheaper. They are usually sold direct to the garages by the smugglers.
One smuggler adds that the same game is played with trucks and that some trucks are brought in whole and then broken up and sold as parts, apparently fetching more.
The same smuggler also points to the car and truck parts racket as being lucrative. He says car parts from anything from springs to brake shoes are brought in England in lots of up to £10,000 and sold in the South for £1,000 clear profit. "The further away from the border the better," he says when it comes to selling, as there is less likelihood of detection.
Grain is the chief smuggled agricultural commodity now, according to Southern farmers, the IFA, customs officials, and smugglers. Due to the difference in EEC subsidies to member nations, it is possible for foreign grain imported into Warrennpoint to be £20 per ton cheaper than Southern grain. IF A officials and port workers in Warrenpoint estimate that between half and two thirds of all grain coming into Warrenpoint is then smuggled south.
Estimates of the quantity of smuggled grain vary from six to forty lorries per day, wi th 30 tons of grain per lorry.
The smuggling operation is sufficiently big that at one point according to both an IFA man and a smuggler, the smugglers actually hired their own boat to bring the grain from France and then distributed it to other smugglers.
The grain smuggling is mainly under the I control of a small number of people in the I east. They have land on either side of the ' border and have sheds that straddle it. They always have on hand a load of grain on which the duty has been paid. The truck with the grain that is about to be smuggled is driven in from the Northern side. The grain is then unloaded and put onto a different waggon and driven out into the South. If the driver is stopped he simply produces the docket for the duty' paid grain. It is, of course, difficult to tell the difference between one load of grain and another.
Earlier this year potatoes were being smuggled onto the market here. They were coming from Southern Europe via England, IF A officials said. They added that they think they were being brought across by the same smugglers who bring the grain over.
There is some trade in eggs but it is a seasonal business, said one smuggler, with demand rising at Christmas and Easter. He says he can hope to make £1,000 in the peak periods by selling to licensed egg dealers in the South.
The smuggled butter trade has dropped IF A officials said, now that the prices in the North and South have evened up. When there was a substantial difference sometime ago a favourite .ploy , one smuggler said, was to obtain a consignnment of Southern butter wrappers, buy the butter from a 'creamery in-the North and sell it down South again in the Southern wrappers, undercutting the official brand label price.
IFA men say that there was some milk being smuggled through to creameries in the northeast of the Republic last winter when a price difference opened up but that it caused no serious harm to the dairy industry because there was an underrproduction of milk in the South at the time.
The merry-go-round may have stopped as far as pigs are concerned, but bacon smuggling is still continuing in a situation that highlights one of the absurdities of the border. Pigs go North to collect an EEC subsidy, which contributes to the shortage of pork in the South. So Northern pigs are then smuggled South to fill the demand.
Customs officials claim that there are at least three factories in the South near the border that have agreements to buv smuggled pigs.
Some factory managers admit off the record that they are buying smuggled pigs, but claim that if they didn't the decline in production would bring lay-offs.
In Letterkenny, customs officials last year seized a truck belonging to the Bacon Company of Ireland containing S8 pigs. The pigs were sold off and the truck seized, and returned on payment of a deposit in 'lieu of fine. The case is Still with the Revenue Commissioners. The officials claim that the pigs had been unloaded rut of one wagon that had smuggled them across, and then loaded onto the BCI lorry in the South.
Michael O'Mara, Managing Director of BCI in' Limerick denied in a recent interrview that BCI is involved in smuggling. He said, however, that in times of shortage they' supplement their purchases from farmers by buying from dealers, "and they (the dealers) can buy the pigs in Nigeria for all I'm concerned."
SMUGGLING, has always been a rough way to make a buck. The smaller operators suffer risks and trials unknown in other sorts of work. "A few years back J was walking the pigs over the border at night time and it was hard sweaty work," said one smuggler. "The pigs would be marked and scraped by the time they reached the mart and there would be a policeman standing over you asking about the scrapes and you had to say they were a mixed bag of pigs. Mixed pigs always fight.
"If you didn't have a good case then thevd lift your pigs or if they didn't do thai, they'd come and check you at three or four in the morning.
"Sometimes vou didn't have a load for yourself and you' had to work for the bigger smugglers. They'd be lying in their beds at night while we would be walking the pigs through for them.
"And the big smugglers didn't care if they were taking a big lot through. They'd knock down your fences and trample vour crops. "
The majority of smugglers operate at night without lights, The longer winter nights usually mean an increase in the smuggling trade, according to customs offficials. Smugglers have a lead car in front to warn of patrols as well as scouts at other points with walkie talkies, They also benefit from border patrol posts being closed at night and only having the mobile patrols to contend with.
One expression that crops up in any conversation with a smuggler is the phrase "buying the road," i.e. bribing the customs to turn a blind eye. Tales of how the road has been bought over the years are legion and no doubt many are apocryphal. Smaller smugglers emphasise that the road could or can only be bought for considerable sums. "
The main smuggling area is on the Newry Dundalk section of the Belfast to Dublin road. It takes in such places as Crossrnaglen, Forkhill, Jonesborough, and Cullyhanna.
While the Dundalk area is the smugglers main base of operations it is followed reasonably closely by the Monaghan area. Then comes the Donegal sector around Lifford and the BallyShannon area of the border.
Backed up against the sea Ballyshannon offers a poor market area and few unnapproved roads for smugglers to use. Most of the roads blown up by the British army in early 70s are unrepaired.
AS romantic as the smuggling business may seem, it produces commonplace headaches to people in agriculture and industry, government officials, and, although it is not readily apparent, to consum~rs and taxpayers.
For example, over the past few years the luxury electrical goods industry has been "kille'd practically stone dead," according to one retailer. There is only one transistor radio manufacturer left in the South. The rest have been underpriced out of the market.
The smuggling south of the early spring potatoes caused a sharp drop in prices on the market. The glut of smuggled grain meant, according to one IF/'. official, that farmers last year were having difficulty in placing their grain and that the grain board was forced to buy more grain than they would otherwise have done,
At one point when the EEC cattle carousel subsidy was on, the British government in addition introduced their own subsidy in the North to help meat plant owners.
This resulted in a vast number of Southern cattle heading ~orth in 1976 to pick up what was, in effect, a double subsidy and left a severe shortage of cattle in the South.
Smugglers sav that a year ago there was an enormous amount of beef being smuggled South -some count it as high as 70 ronnes a week through Castleblaney -when there was a large price diffference. This seriously undercut the Southern home market.
IT becomes apparent in conversations with smugglers that they do not regard themselves as crooks, Thev argue that it is their way of making a living. The public appears to sympathize with them. Neither solicitors nor customs men in I)undalk could recall the last time a smuggler was convicted by a jury.
Customs men understand this and that is the reason 90 percent of the cases are settled out of conn. The customs have the legal power to seize goods and transport on 'the spot. They return the vehicle only on the receipt of a deposit in lieu of a fine. They would rather exercise this extensive power than get tangled up in judicial red tape.
Customs men are willing to talk about their job provided their name isn't meationed, The Nonhero officials are not allowed to speak to the press without authorisation from their superiors, and their counterparts in the Republic can only quote official figures.
But off the record, they will t.eIl of restrictions in their work. For example, in the Norm, the customs patrols move out of :any area where the Anny, UDR, or any of the paramilitary groups are operating.
And in me South, although he has the right 10 look into anything suspicious, one customs officer said he would never open a refrigerated container unless he was 100 percent certain of it conrnining contraaband. He said that the ructions from higher up if nothing was found and the contents spoiled would be more than a possible find was worth,
And they all admit that smuggling is an inevitable consequence of the border. A PMB official in the Nonh said they reckon to lose 2000 pigs per week across the border as "natural trade."
THE circumstances of smugglers vary from the few millionaires to the comforttably off to the guy in the cramped council house who admits he'd be better off if he had "an honest job".
And then there is the whole fraternity of characters.
There is the man slumped in his chair puffing and wheezing and looking like Marlon Brande in the 'The Godfather" as he explains how he impersonated the local police chief in the wartime and smuggled a load of cigarettes Nonh in the chiefs car, having first bribed his chauffeur.
Then there's the man with the reputaation for being one of the biggest smugglers in his area who takes you into his front room, having first unlocked the door to it, and sits back gnawing on the stem of his pipe expressing complete amazement and feigning complete ignorance of last night's customs haul, omitting to mention that his brother was the driver of the truck lifted.
Or the man with the prosperous haulage company who practically turns and bolts when the word smuggling is mentioned.
And the man who has expanded his business so successfully, largely due to smuggling, that he was recently able to go down to the local unemployment office and take a large number off the dole to work for him, thus collecting the £20 subsidy from a grateful government for so doing. -
Earlier this year two customs cars were rammed by a smuggler's truck in the Castlefin area of the Donegal border. desstroying one of the cars. The lony was evenntally taken in by customs men but the driver escaped back across the border. On another occasion in the same area there was a confrontation when customs seized a lony carrying pigs suspected of being smuggled. A group of smugglers armed with sticks appeared and confronted the customs men. They eventually backed away
The smugglers showed just how cheeky they were getting earlier this year on the Donegal border when they starred to erect their own barricades IO block off the in roads onto the unapproved road thev intended using fur sm~.
This meant that the customs had to drag away the barriers, in one case a red Moms Oxford, to get to the unapproved road and to the smugglers.
It is beginning to look more and more as though the smugglers are going to move towards the side of the business where rates of duty and VAT show the largest difference to make their smuggled pound. The agricultural traffic would be free now if it weren't the EEC levies that have to be paid Nonh to South. It is anticipated by the EEC that these will be phased OUl within the next seven years. If and when that happens another colourful chapter in Ireland's history will have drawn to a close.