Far East police destroy thousands of bottles of illegal alcohol

Police in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk have confiscated 400,000 bottles of illegally produced alcohol, ITAR-TASS news agency reported on Wednesday.

It said inspectors had found that the wine, cognac, vodka and champagne were of very poor quality and could have damaged the health of those who drank them.

The drinks were now being destroyed.

Three and a half billion roubles worth of illegally produced alcohol has been destroyed in the city since the beginning of the year, ITAR-TASS said.

Meanwhile, police in the nearby city of Komosomolsk na Amure last week destroyed 57,000 bottles of illegal champagne, and 10,000 bottles of vodka and wine, it added.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.