 Over the past decade, illicit trade has grown into a global phenomenon of far-reaching proportions and causing unprecedented human, social, economic, political and environmental harm. It undermines sustainable economic development and has also become the primary source of funding for transnational organized criminal networks. In July and August 2012, Interpol and the World Customs Organization deployed Operation Meerkat across eastern and southern Africa. This operation in fact is the first one we can say conducted in this particular sector in this region. We have also to remind it's a joint operation between WCO and Interpol. In the first phase we have recorded a good number of seizures which were carried out by both police and customs. As we have discussed also during the preparation of this operation, we believe that we have to establish a sustainable approach for this region in order to support the activities which already are undertaken. The focus of Operation Meerkat was to concentrate law enforcement efforts in combating the trafficking of illicit tobacco and alcoholic beverages to product sectors which are highly affected in the region. To most of these seaports it arrives a lot of products and containers coming from different parts of the world that are going straight to landlocked countries such as Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana. So that's why it's so important that the authorities continue performing this kind of strict control on the containers and merchandise arriving to this region. Our country is losing a lot of revenue every year. Due to illicit trafficking of cigarettes and other tobacco products we are losing about between three and four billion rand each year on driving you which is very important for us to try to apprehend people responsible for this type of crimes. The main challenge that we face is obviously the understanding of the volume of these illicit goods that are coming into the country as well as the monitoring and patrolling our borderlines because we have quite a vast and expansive borderline where these goods come across. So monitoring and enforcing those kind of actions is one of our key challenges at the moment. Operations require several weeks of careful planning, preparation and integrated training with close cooperation and coordination between all the agencies and organizations involved. Police and customs officials work together to patrol land, sea and airport border control points checking vehicles, boats and containers for illicit goods. Raids at marketplaces and shops were also carried out. Operation Meerkat has again revealed increasingly elaborate methods used by transnational organized criminal groups to traffic illicit goods. Traffickers, they prepare a concealed area inside this bus in the underneath part and they hide these tobacco products. These are part of the original consignment that it was hidden. This place, it was intervened some weeks ago and it was part of an intelligence gathering from the private sector that gave place to an intervention performed by customs and an investigation that is currently performed by the police. So this whole consignment, it's valued around 1 million euros and you see it's a big amount of cigarettes from many different brands and the main problem they have, I mean the infraction that they have is that this is a illicit product but it was hidden from the authority to avoid paying taxes so that will of course imply that that money won't come for the government and it will go straight to the counterfeiters and to the smugglers. The resources required to police millions of movements of merchandise across borders involve close cooperation between officers skilled in prevention, intelligence, detection and investigation. This logo or seal that you find here that they call the South African Diamond It must be included in each one of the legal cigarette packages but we don't see it here so this is an illegal product. The operational coordination units monitored the exchange of information between the participating countries with additional support and tools being provided by Interpol's regional bureaus of Eastern and Southern Africa. Those arrested during the interventions have their names checked against Interpol databases. They will take the names and they will make the checks in the database but this is only at the international level but our colleagues here in the economic branch and the tobacco area they are also doing the same checks in the national databases. Police carried out 40 interventions during Operation Meerkat which led to the seizure of more than 32 million sticks of cigarettes, 134 tons of raw tobacco and 2,844 litres of alcohol. Once the criminal proceedings are concluded the seized goods will be sent to central warehouses where they will be destroyed. Operations like Operation Meerkat is playing a vital role to connect people from the different countries that we can rehearse during these operations and it's also operational sort of interventions that you can do through that. The engagement with the WCO and Interpol in terms of spearheading this kind of operation is very important and it gives us an opportunity to network with other countries to utilise the electronic tools that are available to communicate and share information as well as the seizure data on interdictions that are conducted in the countries. It also gives us an opportunity to share some of the risks that are being identified within countries so the WCO and Interpol's engagement with this operation is very important and we appreciate and we support it. Certainly this operation has shown the possibility, the great potential of the cooperation between police and customs at national level as well as by relevant agencies internationally. These seizures, some of the seizures recorded are significant and what is also important to underline is that the job is not concluded here. The exchange of information which occurred amongst the different agencies involved certainly will lead to additional seizures in the forthcoming weeks.