http://duncan.gn.apc.org/bat/Health_Committee_Evidence_1.htm
# From 1990 onwards, the major means by which the cartels sought to bring funds back to Colombia was by means of smuggling. The principal centre for this activity was Aruba, and the principal product involved was cigarettes. At this time, the three most prominent smuggling agents in Aruba were the Harms family, the Mansur family, and Randolph Habibe. The Harms worked for BAT, while the Mansurs worked for Philip Morris, the manufacturers of Marlboro cigarettes.
# The basic mechanism of money laundering was that US dollars raised from cocaine sales were transferred to Aruba, and used to purchase cigarettes from agents such as the Harms or the Mansurs. The cigarettes were then smuggled into Colombia along traditional routes, and sold in urban black market centres known as Sanandresitos. The proceeds of the black market sales were then transferred to the cocaine producers, as "clean" Colombian pesos. This mechanism, known as peso broking, is the basic means of money laundering associated with cocaine trafficking.
# From 1990 onwards, contraband cigarettes increasingly took over from legal cigarette sales in Colombia, at times constituting 70 to 90 per cent of the market. BAT (and Philip Morris) responded to the situation by massively increasing contraband shipments into Colombia, primarily by way of Aruba. BAT files show that successive illegal operations were planned from the United Kingdom to increase smuggling sales into Colombia. Most of the BAT cigarettes concerned came from Venezuela. Smuggling into Colombia was so important to BAT that when Venezuela threatened to introduce export taxes, BATCo responded with an emergency plan to relocate its factories and equipment to Chile instead.
# By 1992, both the Mansurs and the Harms were under active investigation by American and British law enforcement agencies for involvement in cocaine related money-laundering. Yet in the same year, BAT director Keith Dunt visited Aruba to be briefed by Roy Harms about smuggling, and then invited him to enjoy corporate hospitality at Wimbledon alongside ambassadors and a Foreign Office minister.
# Similar features are present in other major BAT smuggling markets. In Hong Kong, the close involvement of the smuggling trade with Triad gangs has resulted in the murder of a BAT manager and an agent, the prosecution for corruption of the company’s former export manager, and other ex-employees fleeing justice.
# In Asia as in Latin America, smuggling routes used by BAT into Myanmar, Thailand, Afghanistan among others overlap directly with traditional narcotics export routes, in this case from the "Golden Triangle" and "Golden Crescent" regions.
We are certainly getting the "other side" of the story now, thanks for these articles, cg!