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by Grizzly » Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:11 am
by seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:18 am
by Grizzly » Thu Sep 21, 2017 10:39 am
by seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:15 am
HOW TO SPOT FAKE SPIRITS IN RUSSIA
01 February 2016 by Erkin Tuzmukhamedov
In the wake of the Krasnoyarsk mass poisoning in which up to 30 people died, just how big a problem does Russia have with fake spirits products? And how can consumers tell the genuine article from a potentially deadly copy? Erkin Tuzmekhamedov reports.
Fake Johnnie Walker
Labels, bottles and caps can be bought on the internet, filled with coloured ethanol and sold to unsuspecting consumers, and even businesses, for a hefty mark-up.
Following the deaths of up to 30 people in Siberia from drinking fake Jack Daniel’s bought on the internet, what is the scale of Russia’s black market in counterfeit whisky, Cognac and other spirits products?
According to estimates, there are anything from 2,000 to 5,000 deaths from drinking fake spirits or surrogate alcohol in Russia every year. Counterfeit western spirits account for just a small fraction of this number.
According to government statistics agency RosStat, 40m litres of whisky were imported into Russia in 2014, most of it Scotch. Over the same timescale, some 55m litres were sold legally, leaving a 15m-litre gap between what was brought into the country, and what was eventually sold. This figure does not include internet sales.
Vadim Drobiz, head of CIFFRA, the Centre for Studies of the Federal Alcohol Market, puts the fakes’ share of the overall imported spirits market at about 20%, and in some leading brands it could be even higher.
According to Drobiz, this is the reason why Scotch whisky imports in Russia declined 5% in 2015, the first fall in a decade.
It is more difficult to find fakes in big chains than in small, independent grocery stores, and it is really difficult to find fakes in good restaurants and well-known bars in big cities; but very easy in small eateries and drinking dens in suburbs and rural towns.
An internal police report for Russia’s Northwestern region, leaked to the Press two years ago, estimated the number of small, illegal garage-type bootleggers at 500-1,000 in that region alone.
The business model is simple: buy labels, bottles, caps and excise stamps on the internet from a ‘reliable’ source; mix ethanol with water, and add colouring on the spot, in your garage. No need to transport fake long distances – business can be done locally.
Beware of more premium brands bottled in 50cl bottles, like Chivas Regal 18 Year Old – the likliehood is that they are not the real deal.
The fake spirits business has been flourishing in Russia for many years now, but it seldom becomes front page national news, because when done ‘right’ (with ethanol as a base spirit), nobody is poisoned. This is why the Krasnoyarsk case became news.
The business is known and monitored by the police, who have a special department, equipped with a laboratory to study fakes. But most of the time it’s a question of intellectual property infringement, not lethal poisoning.
A few years ago, you could buy fake alcohol via a chain of garages in five-litre plastic canisters: you find a local supplier, call him, and somebody will bring you a selection of whisky/rum/Tequila/Cognac in the boot of their car.
Again, since nobody was poisoned, not much fuss was made of this market in so-called ‘elite spirits’, sold in canisters and a mixture of ethanol with colouring and aromatics. Many student parties, and even some bars, were known to use this.
Then the market became more sophisticated. Clients became more choosy, and bootleggers became rich enough to order ‘proper’ bottles , ‘proper’ labels and ‘proper’ excise stamps.
A basic bottle form costs around €10,000 (you pay it once, then you can order any run you want). Labels are easier and cheaper. Excise stamps seem to be more of a problem, but take a short surf on the internet and you get an offer to buy them at RUB3 ($0.05) per stamp if you order 50,000 copies. That’s the scale of the problem – 50,000 stamps as a minimum order.
The cost of producing a fake bottle of alcohol is comparable to that of a legally produced vodka. A half-litre bottle of vodka costs around RUB20 to produce, including simple bottle, cap and label.
The government regulates the minimum price of vodka at RUB200 (50cl bottle). A high price for a population that lives in poverty. So a lot of people prefer to buy illegal vodka.
That was always the explanation for the high levels of counterfeit vodka – and very often it is real vodka, bottled in legal plants – but during the night shift and without paying tax. CIFFRA estimates that up to 50% of vodka in Russia is illegal.
However, the margins on illegal vodka are relatively small, because you have to sell it for half the price (or less) of the legal equivalent. But move into faking imported alcohol and it’s a different world.
The cheapest genuine half-litre bottle of Jack Daniel’s is about RUB1,000, while the cost of all packaging components and ethanol for a fake version is probably less than RUB100. And you can sell it for RUB400-600.
Leonid Raphaelov, head of AST Ltd, the biggest wine and spirits distributor in the Moscow region, told me three years ago that someone approached him with an offer to buy a shipment of Johnnie Walker Blue label for RUB165 (US$5 at the time). But the bottles were… 50cl. And it was a serious business offer. Leonid declined, but what about the many small and murky distributors?
Surf chats and forums, and you can come across offers like this: ‘Sell Johnnie Walker Blue label by the bottle, RUB700 per bottle. We bought four cases for a wedding, and I have a few bottles left…’ A wedding with four cases of JW Blue? Is Abramovich getting married again?
Grigori Pogosyan, a well-known radio-TV journalist and a good friend of mine, asked for help last summer: a manager at one of the major oil companies was turning 38, and their Armenian circle wanted to give him a bottle of Chivas Regal 38-year-old as a birthday present. Someone offered them a bottle for RUB25,000, but they were looking for a better deal.
I called the brand manager, only to find they were out of stock. And that, in their price list, Chivas 38 was RUB38,000 (US$1,250 USD at last year’s rate). Grigori told me that their friend, also an Armenian, was offering them Chivas 38 for RUB25,000 – but it was in a half-litre bottle.
I had to disappoint him that Chivas never bottles 38yo in half-litre bottles. Imagine such a nice margin? To sell a fake that costs RUR100 for RUR25,000?
EPILOGUE: Back to Krasnoyarsk
Right after the Krasnoyarsk mass poisoning, the police closed down hundreds of websites selling alcohol. If you search the web with the term ‘buy Jack Daniel’s whisky’, you will find most of the links closed.
Nobody put forward any conspiracy theory in relation to the poisoning, but there had been numerous appeals by the government in the past few years to ban internet alcohol sales (claiming – and in many cases rightfully so – that uncontrolled internet sales boost fakes/surrogate alcohol sales).
However, there was never broad support for this, because most importers and distributors had their legal internet sales departments. Now it has been done without any debate at all.
https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/in-de ... in-russia/
by Harvey » Thu Sep 21, 2017 7:44 pm
by Cordelia » Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:15 am
by seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 22, 2017 4:10 pm
Russian Trolls Are Waging War on Morgan Freeman
Russian state-sponsored media labeled him a lying stoner after he released a video condemning the country's alleged interference in the 2016 election.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8x88 ... etwitterus
by Burnt Hill » Fri Sep 22, 2017 5:58 pm
Grizzly » Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:11 am wrote:https://theoutline.com/post/2298/the-correct-way-to-be-a-cannibal
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:08 am
Russian ‘cannibal couple’ may have drugged, killed and eaten as many as 30 people, police say
By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. September 26 at 5:21 PM
Investigators believe that a Russian couple knocked their victims out with sedatives, then skinned them alive. Afterward, police say, they ate parts of their victims, froze the remains or packed them in jars filled with saline solution.
At times, the couple tried to turn soldiers at the military academy where they worked into unwitting cannibals, slipping “canned human meat” into their food.
And people in the city of Krasnodar may never have known about any of it if not for a cellphone lying on a city street, authorities say.
City police have arrested the couple — Natalia Baksheeva and her husband, 35-year-old Dmitry Baksheev — who authorities say may be responsible for the deaths or disappearances of as many as 30 people in the city of 750,000 in the southwestern tip of Russia, about five hours from Sochi. So far, Baksheev has been charged with one count of murder, and the investigation is ongoing.
If all the killings are confirmed, the couple would rank among the country's worst serial killers.
The investigation started Sept. 11, according to the Moscow Times, when crews repairing a road found a discarded cellphone. It still worked, so they swiped through the photos.
What they found made them dash to a police station. On the phone were “photos of a man with different parts of a dismembered human body in his mouth,” the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a statement.
[Chilling videos show a serial killer confessing to seven murders]
Around the same time that investigators were poring over the phone, officers found the dismembered corpse of a 35-year-old woman near the state-run aviation academy where the couple lived, according to Vice News.
Investigators were able to determine the phone's owner via “special technical measures” and arrested Baksheev, according to a news release.
In police custody, he told authorities that he and his wife had practiced cannibalism at least 30 times in the past two decades, according to the BBC.
The investigation ballooned from there. The details are still spotty, but some have seeped out as the story has rocketed around the world.
The earliest potential killing, based on time stamps of photos the couple had, dates to 1999.
For years, the couple lived at what the BBC called a “hostel accommodation” at the site of the military base. One or both had at one point worked on the base, in the kitchen.
Investigators have not said how they think the couple chose their victims, only how they rendered them unconscious — and what came after.
“In the place of residence of the suspects, the investigators discovered fragments of the human body in saline solution in the dormitory. … Frozen meat parts of unknown origin were seized in the kitchen,” investigators said, according to CBS News.
According to CNN, one police source said that “law enforcement had discovered a glass jar with a canned hand.”
Unofficially, officials have designated the pair the “cannibal couple,” but they have not released many details about them.
Russian news stations released video of a police search, apparently from the couple's home.
The footage showed a messy, disheveled room, with trash, debris and clothes scattered on the floor and draped over furniture. There were also wigs on top of a small freezer and dozens of pictures on a bed.
The couple's pictures were telling, Russian investigators said. One photograph, dated Dec. 28, 1999, appears to show a dismembered human head on a serving plate with fruit.
Earlier this year, former Siberian police officer Mikhail Popkov — nicknamed the “werewolf of Siberia” for his brutal killings — confessed to killing 81 people.
According to The Washington Post's Fred Barbash, Popkov's victims ranged in age from 17 to 38. He started his spree as a police officer, offering women rides in his car, then taking them to remote locations and raping and killing them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... 30bc555037
by Cordelia » Wed Sep 27, 2017 12:56 pm
Historian uncovers diaries from Nazi siege of Leningrad documenting cannibalism during famine
Newly discovered diaries reveal horror of siege
Narjas Zatat Sunday 18 June 2017
A historian has unearthed previously unseen diaries documenting the fall of Leningrad and the consequential famine that ripped across the Russian city, plunging many of its residents into cannibalism.
The German army blockade of the city ran from September 1941 to January 1944 – lasting 872 days and causing the deaths of more than 800,000 people.
continued.....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 96246.html
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