Deadly fake alcohol doing the rounds

CRIMINALS are using windscreen wash and other potentially deadly liquids to produce millions of near-perfect counterfeit bottles of top-brand vodka and gin, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

The scam - which could cause blindness or even death - is so serious that Customs chiefs have set up a dedicated squad to track down and shut the illegal factories churning out thousands of bottles a day.

The fake bottles are being sold to pubs, clubs and corner shops for a fraction of the normal price but the illegal spirits are likely to contain dangerously high levels of methanol.

It is understood products made by major firms such as Diageo - which bottles millions of bottles of spirit in Scotland annually - are among those targeted by the gangs. Known to operate in England, they are suspected of recently moving north of the Border.

Globally, it is estimated that up to £350m a year is lost to the alcohol trade as a result of counterfeiting, despite repeated efforts to fight the problem.

The Customs team tasked with identifying and shutting down illegal stills is based in Scotland, and has already had two notable successes in south Wales and the north-west of England. At one of the sites, officers seized 5,000 litres of spirits and 25,000 empty bottles. Large quantities of methanol and industrial alcohol were also found at the site in Cardiff.

But as quickly as the team shuts down distilleries, they spring up elsewhere, and the trend is to keep moving north.

A senior Customs investigator told Scotland on Sunday the gangs had identified and copied every aspect of legal, commercial drinks production.

"It is not just a case of distilling and pouring it into plastic bottles as used to be the case," he said. "Today, they will have a bottling plant, labelling facilities, cardboard boxes bearing the name of major high street brands and a sophisticated distribution network. They even have copies of the duty stamps recently introduced precisely to try to eradicate this problem."

He added: "They realise the public wants the best brands, so that is what they are endeavouring to copy."

Most chilling of all are the risks the criminals are prepared to take with the health of their customers. "The first step in the operation is to obtain the basic spirit required for the distilling process and in these cases that means going abroad," said the source.

"Spain and Portugal are the two main countries of origin for the alcohol. It is imported in a raw form, often as windscreen wiper fluid arriving in industrial tankers before the spirit is treated to remove many of the ingredients until they are left with a simple alcohol or so-called 'potable spirit'.

"Because it comes into the country as say, windscreen wiper fluid, there is no duty to be paid on it. But after the 'cleansing' process it is ready to be turned into white spirit."

White spirits are the favoured choice of the gangs because, unlike whisky, vodka and gin are almost always mixed with other drinks, making it easier to mask the taste difference.

The price of the counterfeit spirits varies depending on the accuracy of the copying, but a typical price is around £5 - half to a third of the normal retail price. If the copy is near perfect, the price tag to consumers could be very close to the legitimate one, maximising profit for the gang. Customs believe the vast majority of pubs, clubs and stores buying the counterfeit products will be fully aware of their origins but turn a blind eye.

In Scotland alone, Diageo annually bottles 42 million cases of whisky and white spirit, along with 10 million cases of so-called RTD (ready to drink) products such as alcopops.

The firm has joined forces, along with other leading drinks companies, including Pernod-Ricard and Bacardi Brown-Forman with the International Federation of Spirit Producers (IFSP). Experts from the organisation have developed a special technique specifically to identify counterfeit white spirits with an easy-to-use dipstick method.

An IFSP spokesman said: "We recognise that counterfeit products can represent a serious threat to the health of consumers and a decrease of revenue to governments through the avoidance of tax and duty. It also damages the integrity of official brand names.

"We liaise with all appropriate law enforcement authorities and provide information and analytical techniques relating to the recognition and detection of counterfeit products."

In 2003, a 42-year-old Musselburgh woman died and a 39-year-old from Tranent ended up seriously ill in hospital after drinking bootleg vodka.

The two women had consuming a large amount of Vodka Russia, which was found to contain high levels of methanol.

Methanol, a highly toxic form of alcohol, is produced by the distillation process but is largely removed by sophisticated commercial drinks firms. Gangs counterfeiting the products have much greater difficulty controlling the amount of methanol.

Typically, just 4ml of methanol can cause blindness and an 80-150ml dose can be fatal.

The effect depends partly on the weight of the drinker. Half a millilitre of methanol per kilogram of the drinker's weight causes heart or respiratory failure leading to death.

Sufferers who do not die may remain in a coma for a week and suffer permanent blindness.

Those who ingest small amounts of methanol will suffer from an upset stomach, dizziness and vision problems, which are similar to the effects of drinking ethanol, "normal" alcohol. However, after symptoms subside they return 6 to 30 hours later with greater severity.