He pulled out a small piece of yellowed paper, covered with British excise stamps.

In many countries, tobacco and alcohol are taxed by the use of excise stamps.

In particular, optical security elements for Ukrainian excise stamps are currently being produced.

Starting Saturday, any bottle of imported alcohol is required to have a newly designed excise stamp.

In countries where excise stamps are required, all cigarettes and alcohol produced legally will bear a stamp.

"But he only did excise stamps, never money," he added hastily, seeing Eloise's face.

The new excise stamp required for all wine and spirits products came into effect July 1 of this year, causing the near collapse of the legal alcohol market.

An excise stamp is type of revenue stamp affixed to some exciseable goods to indicate that the required excise tax has been paid by the manufacturer.

An exception to this are tobacco-products as all tobacco products sold in Ireland need to have an excise stamp, while this doesn't apply for "real" duty-free tobacco.

Excise stamps and are often as detailed in their design as banknotes - usually made from the same type of paper and containing holograms and other anti-counterfeit devices.

Security elements rooted in innovation in holography have been manufactured and supplied by SE Holography for government needs such as projects on registered documents, including excise stamps.

In 1820 Donkin worked with Sir William Congreve on preventing the forgery of excise stamps, using a method of two-colour printing with compound printing plates.

Excise stamps are most commonly found on tobacco and alcohol products, which reach the consumer in neatly packaged units (namely packets and bottles) to which the adhesive stamp is easily affixed.

In the last analysis the 67 12s. 9d. would stand revealed; the pen would be taken out of his fingers just before he signed across the excise stamp; gentle hands would conduct him back to the comfortable shabby gloom of Flat 4, 86 Leominster Gardens.

Since counterfeit alcohol and cigarettes are extremely common in many countries, the presence of a genuine excise stamp also goes some way towards guaranteeing the genuineness of the product, as only certified producers may legally buy excise stamps.

Worse, the law forbids selling imports with the old excise stamps and requires sellers to warehouse them in the meantime, forcing stores to empty their shelves this week in preparation or, at one supermarket chain, to sell their imported stocks at a steep discount that was not, alas, widely advertised.

The excise stamps are ideally affixed with strong glue over the cap of a bottle or across the lid of a box of cigarettes (and underneath the plastic/foil wrapper on the bottleneck or the cellophane of the cigarette-box) in such a way that they are destroyed when the product is opened.

FSB ROLE IN ALCOHOL MARKET IS CITED: The government investigation into the new information system that was responsible for the excise stamp crisis in the alcohol market found that it has no legal right to exist.