Bootleg alcohol, truckers sit on ice at Russian border

Yeltsin: Moonshine vodka deadly

By RICHARD C. PADDOCK Los Angeles Times

KAZBEGI CHECKPOINT, Georgia Truck driver Taimuraz Taimazov heats his
spaghetti with a blowtorch. His kitchen table is a plank by the side of the
road, and he sleeps in his cab in a long line of trucks parked near the
Russian border.

For the past five weeks, the trucker has been stuck in this narrow mountain
pass in a dispute with his native Russia, but he never lacks for something
to drink: He is hauling 30 tons of nearly pure alcohol.

"I've been sitting here for more than a month," said Taimazov, who has
broken open his shipment to help pass the time. "If the alcohol was bad,
we'd be dead by now."

To Georgian authorities, Taimazov and his fellow drivers are lawabiding
drivers carrying legitimate cargo. But to Russia, they are smugglers trying
to sneak ethyl alcohol across the border for the manufacture of lowgrade,
illegal and sometimes lethal vodka.

Russian officials say the illegal trade in alcohol is costing the
government nearly $6 million a day in lost tax revenues and contributing to
a soaring increase in deaths across the nation from the consumption of
poisonous moonshine vodka.

In midJuly, Russia closed its border with Georgia to trucks hauling
untaxed and unlicensed alcohol. As a result, hundreds of Russian and
Georgian trucks have been stuck for weeks at a time in a no man's land at
the Kazbegi border post, unable to enter Russia and unwilling to head back
into Georgia.

Russia's refusal to allow the alcohol into the country has touched off a
heated dispute with Georgia, and also has created a bizarre scene at the
Kazbegi border crossing, where truckers camp, drink and slaughter sheep for
dinner near the ruins of a 12thcentury castle.

Georgian officials estimate that at least 500 trucks and possibly more
than 1,000 have been blocked from entering Russia, depriving the world's
most ardent drinkers of 10,000 to 20,000 tons of alcohol.

In a nationwide radio address, Russian President Boris Yeltsin defended the
decision to keep out the trucks, saying that the production of illicit
vodka in Russia is undermining legitimate, taxpaying distilleries and
costing the government the equivalent of $172 million a month in lost tax
revenues.

In Soviet times, the president said, taxes on alcohol contributed 25
percent of Russia's budget. Today, the amount has fallen to just 5 percent.
Funds that once supported the government now finance a vast network of
bootlegging and other criminal activity, he said.

Until Russia began its blockade, bootleggers were importing ethyl alcohol
from at least 17 countries, including the United States and Canada.
Typically, they would dilute the 96 percent pure alcohol with water, bottle
it to look like legitimate brands of vodka, ship it to cities around the
country and sell it at stores and sidewalk kiosks.

Russian officials say that 70 percent of all vodka sold in the country is
now produced illegally in North Ossetia, a republic in southern Russia near
the Georgian border where most of the stranded trucks were bound.

With so much alcohol being produced without state inspections or health
regulations, the number of deaths from alcohol poisoning has nearly tripled
in the past five years, Yeltsin said.

Officially, the government estimates that 35,000 Russians died from alcohol
poisoning last year and some analysts put the number at many thousands
more. Episodes of mass poisonings from tainted alcohol have become
commonplace. Spot checks of vodka sold from street kiosks have found that
up to 50 percent is unfit for consumption, Yeltsin said.

Instead of following the common practice of letting trucks reach the border
post, inspecting them and seizing any illicit cargo, Russia has forced the
trucks to remain on the Georgian side.

"They should be dealing with the problem on their side of the border, not
ours," protested Valery Chkheidze, chief of Georgia's border guards.

The heavily loaded vehicles have taken up residence in the steep Caucasus
Mountain gorge along the Terek River, parking in tunnels and on both sides
of the roadway. Georgian officials worry that the huge quantity of highly
flammable alcohol could result in a disastrous explosion, permanently
shutting down the main road that leads from Russia to Georgia and Armenia.

Already, a rock slide has killed two truckers. A third driver died in an
apparent suicide.

In Moscow, Russian officials say they plan to keep the border shut to
alcohol shipments.

"This moonshine will never make it into Russia, only over our dead bodies,"
said Sergei D. Ivanchenko, chief spokesman for the Russian border guards.
"The time has come to do things in the right way in Russia. Laws should be
observed, and starting with vodka is not a bad choice."

But according to Georgian officials, about 150 trucks have managed to find
gaps in the border in recent days. Some have crossed at the Kazbegi
checkpoint, their alcohol disguised as mineral water, while others have
found their way into Russia through Azerbaijan, the officials say.

As the nights get colder, some of the drivers have used alcohol from their
shipments to heat their cabs by burning it in old soda cans. Others use it
to keep warm the old fashioned way: by drinking it.

Taimazov, the Russian trucker, said the owner of his shipment will not mind
that he opened up one of the 200 liter barrels in his truck and helped
himself.

"I think they will understand our predicament," he said.