Russian police seize 1 million bottles of bootleg vodka

Russian police have arrested more than ten citizens of South Ossetia for the illegal sale of one million bottles of bootleg vodka, Russian news agency BusinessFM.ru reports. The value of the seized alcohol is reported to be more than 3 billion rubles ($100 million).

According to the reports, the criminals were using excise labels, which were thought lost.

Half of the million bottles were seized by Russian police during a special operation in South Ossetia. Investigators discovered several excise label rolls with 50 million erased sequential production numbers.  

“The operation has been going on in Moscow and South Ossetia for several days,” the head of the Moscow Directorate for Combating Economic Crimes, Philip Zolotnitsky said. “The production of the plant has been going up for sale in all the regions of Russia. Now, our investigators are trying to remove the bootleg vodka from sale.”