Batch of Counterfeit Cigarettes Worth $5 Million Destroyed in Ryazan

A large batch of counterfeit cigarettes worth about $5 million has been destroyed in Ryazan. The counterfeit cigarettes were dumped into a pit at an industrial landfill and driven over by bulldozers and graders, after which the pit was backfilled.

The destroyed batch of counterfeit products is the largest in the past 10 years, said Alexander Vorobyov, press secretary at the Head Directorate for Economic Crimes of the Federal Service for Economic and Tax Crimes of the RF Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The counterfeits belonged to a criminal group arrested in early 2003 as a result of a joint operation conducted by the Head Directorate for Economic Crimes and the Department for Economic Crimes of the Ryazan Region Department of Internal Affairs. The counterfeit cigarettes were produced at the Shilovo Tobacco Factory. The investigation also found that the criminals started manufacturing the products without rights holders' authorization in the summer of 2001. The factory produced cigarettes under well-known trademarks. Sergei Kabashov, head of the Department for Economic Crimes of the Ryazan Region Department of Internal Affairs, said that the criminal group included 12 people. The criminals organized the illegal production of counterfeit cigarettes, shipment, transportation, storage, sale and delivery to criminal wholesale buyers, raking in enormous profits in the process, Kabashov said. When transporting the products, they left about 5 meters in truck trailers, which were entered into the shipping documents as hay and other goods, RIA Novosti reports. The investigation found that the fake cigarettes were intended for large-scale exports outside Russia. Counterfeit products of well-known trademarks produced in the Ryazan region were transported via Moscow to Smolensk, Bryansk, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad and subsequently exported through Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to Germany, Italy, the U.K., Denmark and several other E.U. countries. Police estimates say that the cigarettes seized would have occupied as many as six railroad cars; a total of approximately 4,500 boxes of counterfeit cigarettes was destroyed.