Russia jail 'hides fake CD plant'

By Steve Rosenberg
BBC Moscow correspondent

Moscow has cracked down on stalls selling pirate CDs and DVDs

Inmates at a maximum-security prison in Siberia have been caught making bootleg CDs, Russian police say.

The prison warden and local businessmen are being questioned after tens of thousands of recordings were seized in a secret workshop under the prison.

Russian bootleggers are thought to cost the music industry over a billion dollars every year.

Though the country has dozens of secret CD factories, this is believed to be the first case of jailhouse rock.

Music and murderers

In a Russian jail, labour is part of life.

Inmates make everything from duvets to dolls, kitchen tables to army tanks.

An honest day's work is seen as the best way of helping convicts break with their criminal past.

But in this prison in Siberia, the only thing inmates have been breaking - is the law.

Police who stumbled on the giant underground workshop inside the maximum security jail believe prisoners spent the last three years pumping out bootleg CDs and tapes.

In that time, hundreds of thousands of illegal recordings have spilled off the prison production line, filling shops across Siberia.

Police are investigating how convicted murderers were roped in to make cheap music.