Tobacco case: Bormann was suspected of manufacturing counterfeit cigarettes
A new turn is being planned in the long-term investigation of the activities of the drug cartel, created, according to investigators, by Oleg Pruteanu, nicknamed Borman, and his associates. In Europe, the locations of criminal assets related to the illegal production of cigarettes and belonging to the Moldovan ethnic organized crime community are being established. The beneficiaries of a profitable business have cheap labor, high-quality machine tools, an endless stream of almost gratuitous raw materials and secretive industrial areas at their disposal. Police sources believe that the cigarette business was an additional source of income for the Moldovan drug mafia in Russia. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
Nicotine traffic
Last summer, the fight against counterfeit cigarettes intensified throughout Europe, the number of which reached an exorbitant level in the EU. At the end of September, Italian police officers closed the largest production facility previously identified near Cassino (Ancona province). Over 300 tons of finished products were seized. The production was located on an area of 1.6 thousand square meters in a bunker, the entrance to which was blocked by hydraulic gates.
According to Western experts, the factory was able to produce about 2.7 billion cigarettes per year, or 7.2 million cigarettes a day. At about the same time, a large workshop in Grimbergen, Belgium, was liquidated. Several workers who were forcibly detained in an underground factory were also released there. The police say that one of the business administrators has been detained, a man with multiple nationalities. A source familiar with the investigation told Izvestia that he was from Eastern Europe.
According to KPMG researchers (an international network of auditing and consulting firms) for 2024, the volume of counterfeit tobacco consumed in the EU is at least 9.2% of the total volume, which is approximately 39 billion cigarettes. The auditors estimate that the losses in taxes and deductions amount to almost €15 billion. The main consumer of counterfeit products is France, where every third cigarette smoked (37.6%) was produced illegally.
Back on stage
Sergei Pelikh, a former high-ranking officer of the Interior Ministry's Investigative Department and an expert on international organized crime, links illegal cigarette factory networks in Europe to Oleg Pruteanu, nicknamed Borman, the alleged leader of the ethnic Moldovan criminal community wanted in Russia.
— The fact is that he created such enterprises, actively using the infrastructure and connections formed during the construction of trans-European hashish traffic from Africa. Herbal drugs were often transported from Morocco along with tobacco in order to conceal the cargo. Over time, they decided to use the raw materials for their intended purpose — to manufacture cigarettes illegally. Profitability is quite comparable to drug trafficking, but it is much easier to organize, and control over this kind of criminal business in Europe was weakened a few years ago.
Raw materials were also supplied from Bulgaria and Moldova. This ethnic criminal community has at its disposal almost unlimited human resources for this kind of activity, the source notes.
— As a rule, people from Moldova who have problems with documents are recruited to factories, often people are promised money and called to work, but this often ends with slave labor. Members of the group often lure fellow countrymen and migrants from Ukraine to Moldova with promises of earnings in Europe," said Sergey Pelikh. — And when he is brought to such production in a dusty workshop with boarded—up windows, he is confronted with the fact that he owes money for entry into the EU, food, and so on. If a person protests, the bandits brutally beat him, promising trouble to his family remaining in Moldova.
The first roundups
The turnaround in the Moldovan mafia case began back in October 2023. The Portuguese Office of Foreigners and Borders (SEF) has detained the leader of an international criminal network wanted by the Spanish authorities for smuggling and organizing illegal business. Moldovan Gennady Flocha, known by the nicknames Borman Sr. and Daniel, was arrested in the city of Sintra near Lisbon. Flocha has already served 17 years in prison in Portugal for human trafficking, slavery and extortion. He is the brother of Oleg Pruteanu, who is wanted by the Russian justice system for a series of serious crimes as part of the criminal community.
According to local media, 50-year-old Flocha headed an extensive criminal group with branches in Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Ukraine and Moldova. He was wanted by Interpol in several countries at once. He was officially detained at the request of Spain. The investigation believes that Flocha was one of the leaders of a transnational criminal organization involved, in particular, in the underground production of cigarettes. One of the large factories operated in the town of Cambeo (Spanish province of Ourense).
According to Spanish security officials, workers for the factory were hired in Eastern European countries and were kept in conditions close to slavery: some of them did not know their location, and were also deprived of the opportunity to use mobile communications.
The raw materials were supplied by land transport from different countries, and the main logistics center operated in Cambeo, from where the finished products entered the black market, the Spanish police established.
Floca and Pruteanu, according to the Russian justice system, jointly organized the hashish traffic from North Africa to Europe. Russia has been and remains one of the main drug-consuming countries. Earlier, Izvestia wrote about a multi-year special operation by security forces from several countries called the Pyrenean Kink.
How the factory works
One of the former prisoners of a similar workshop, discovered in July in Italy, gave an interview to Moldovan human rights activist and journalist Pavel Grigorchuk. A Russian-speaking citizen of Ukraine named Alexander came to the EU to avoid mobilization. He had previously worked in the tobacco industry and agreed to a 45-day shift offered by a certain Alexander Butnaru, whom a friend introduced him to. Alexander and 10 other people were taken from the hotel by two men who demanded to hand over personal belongings and mobile communication facilities due to the "confidentiality" of the upcoming work (everyone guessed that the production was not completely legal). We were traveling from Vienna to Italy. At the final stage of the journey, the escorts demanded that the workers put blindfolds on their eyes. They were brought to a hangar equipped with machines for the production of cigarettes. The workers lived and ate in a makeshift barracks. Alexander, along with another guy, serviced the Mark 9 machine, which produces up to 7,000 cigarettes per minute, and the machine's tobacco rod forming speed is 490 m/min. As Izvestia found out, the cost of such a machine exceeds $ 500 thousand.
Alexander was promised €1 per box (500 packs) in 45 days, €2.5 for the operator, and €5 for the engineer. After setting up at full capacity, the workshop produced 400 boxes (500 packs each) per day.
— In fact, all personnel costs per day cost the mafia no more than 1% of the final cost of products. Of course, there are also costs for depreciation, production and logistics. But all the costs are many times less than the profit," Pelich explained.
The Russian template
The expert does not exclude that Moldovan mafiosi were also behind part of the illegal tobacco production during the active functioning of hashish drug trafficking to Russia.
— Even 10 years ago, cigarette factories where Moldovan citizens worked were regularly identified. The specifics of this business and the traditions of national crime in this country suggest that such cases could not be done without the knowledge of criminal bosses, including Borman.
Workshops operated in the south of Russia, in Saratov, Kursk and other regions, and even in the capital region.
"Today, the black market offers a large range and volumes of counterfeit cigarette products from Bulgaria and Moldova — social networks are flooded with ads for small wholesale," a law enforcement source told Izvestia. — Most likely, this trade is controlled by the bosses of Moldovan groups operating in Russia. Another part of the traffic — contraband goods from Transcaucasia — is managed by the relevant ethnic organized crime groups.
Harmful production
Illegal cigarette production is a huge illegal business that affects the budget and the health of citizens at the same time, says Alexey Gavrishev, lawyer and managing partner of AVG Legal.
— A cigarette is a special product: it cannot be produced without a license, excise tax and mandatory labeling, — explains the interlocutor of Izvestia. — Therefore, any clandestine production automatically becomes a crime. Firstly, the state is losing billions of rubles in taxes and excise taxes. Secondly, the consumer has no guarantees: such tobacco can contain anything, and no one checks the quality. And finally, it is a direct competition to honest business.
The lawyer recalled that such activities fall under several criminal structures at once: illegal entrepreneurship, production and sale of unmarked products, forgery of excise stamps.
Judicial practice shows that for large parties, real terms of imprisonment are already imposed, rather than a suspended sentence. In recent years, there have been sentences of five to six years in real prison, especially when it came to thousands of boxes of tobacco, Gavrishev notes.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
