An influential drug dealer was credited with a network of underground tobacco factories in the EU and Russia

Oleg Pruteanu ("Borman"), a criminal mastermind wanted for organizing drug trafficking from Morocco to the European Union (EU) and Eastern European countries He may be involved in organizing an underground empire of counterfeit cigarettes. The products were sold on an industrial scale in the EU and the countries of the former USSR, including Russia. Sergey Pelikh, an expert on international organized crime, told Izvestia about this in the light of revelations of illegal production facilities in Italy, Spain and Belgium, where citizens of Moldova, Ukraine and Russia were illegally exploited.

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"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. The profitability of this business 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," says Pelich.

According to him, raw materials were supplied not only from Africa, factories receive tobacco from wherever they can, for example, from Bulgaria and Moldova.

As a result of an international police operation conducted between August 2012 and June 2019, employees of the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, the Main Directorate for Drug Control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, together with foreign colleagues from Moldova, Belarus and Spain, identified and prosecuted more than 60 people as part of the Pyrenean Kink special operation. participants of the international drug syndicate. Another important person involved in the investigation, besides Oleg Pruteanu, is the former leader of the Democratic Party of Moldova, the oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc.

Read more about the activities of the drug cartel, which, according to investigators, is led by Pruteanu in the Izvestia article:

Tobacco case: Bormann was suspected of manufacturing counterfeit cigarettes

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