An Israeli caught on Wednesday with duty free tobacco crossing into the south at Dherynia in a Turkish Cypriot taxi is the latest incident in what the customs department described on Thursday as possibly part of an ‘ant smuggling’ ring.

“There is a worrying upward trend over the past two months with Israeli nationals transporting tobacco products from the occupied areas,” the customs department said.

‘Ant smuggling’ is a method of illegally moving goods, such as cigarettes, drugs or cash, where traffickers avoid transporting a single shipment, but use many people – rather like worker ants – to individually move small quantities and so pass under the radar of the authorities.

In the latest incident, customs agents stopped a Turkish Cypriot taxi with an Israeli passenger who was on his way to Larnaca airport.

The agents found 15 cartons of 200 cigarettes each and 3kg of nargileh tobacco, all duty free and without the required health warnings.

The products were confiscated and sent for destruction. The man was arrested and later released in an out-of-court settlement of €2,000.

The customs department said that the number of Israelis bringing tobacco from the north with the aim of transporting it to Israel had risen in the past two months, leading to suspicions of a possible trafficking ring.

“Following two hauls in February and November 2025, when a trafficking ring was found operating with boats and ships off the coast of Cyprus destined for Israel, it appears that the network turned to ant smuggling,” the department said.

In June, Israelis accounted for 14 per cent of those caught smuggling tobacco products, specifically 41 out of 288. Of the cigarettes confiscated, 30 per cent were found on Israelis, specifically 22,080 out of 72,620.

In July, confiscated tobacco from Israelis was 24.5 per cent of the total, or 46 out of 188, accounting for almost half the total haul of cigarettes, specifically 20,980 out of 42,050.