VinTA
October 7, 2004

A large batch of counterfeit cigarettes bearing foreign trademarks was destroyed today in Ryazan, according to the press service of the Head Directorate for Economic Crimes of the RF Ministry of Internal Affairs.

According to estimates by foreign rights holders, the destroyed products were worth $5 million. The cigarettes were smuggled into EU countries.

The destroyed fakes belonged to a group of criminals arrested early last year as the result of joint efforts by officers from the directorates for economic crimes of the RF Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ryazan region.

A preliminary investigation ascertained that the seized unmarked cigarettes were made at the Shilovo Tobacco Factory. In the summer of 2001, without the agreement of rights holders, the factory began producing tobacco products under the well-known trademarks LM, Marlboro, HB, Camel, and West.

A group that, according to preliminary findings, included 12 criminals organized the production of fake tobacco products, shipment, transportation, storage, sale and the conspiratorial delivery of the fakes to criminal wholesale customers, raking in enormous profits in the process.

The cigarettes were transported in trucks. The criminals transported the goods by under-loading approximately the last five meters of truck trailers and recording in shipping documents that this space was filled with hay or other cargos.

It has been established that the counterfeit tobacco products were intended for large-scale illicit exports. Thus, tobacco products made in the Ryazan region were transported via Moscow to Smolensk, Bryansk, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad, where they were transshipped and delivered through Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to Germany, Italy, the U.K, Denmark and a number of other EU countries.