Those who enjoy a glass of whisky before dinner may have thought twice before having their drink last week. The Anti- Drug and Smuggling Unit (ADSU) has uncovered a traffic in adulterated whisky and rum after a number of consumers made complaints. 4,000 bottles of De Luxe and Sir Edwards whisky bottled by Grays were seized by ADSU officers. The company asserts that the adulterated whisky comes from an illegal network with which they have nothing to do.

The adulterated whisky is in fact a mixture of white alcohol, white rum and bottom-of-the-range whisky. Those who drink such a mixture can have headaches, diarrhoea and vomiting. In fact, Grays is at the origin of the investigations. One of its managers made a statement to the police two weeks ago saying that counterfeited products bearing the Grays label could be found on the market.

This is how it all started. The police visited supermarkets and shops at Circonstance, St-Pierre, Fond-du-Sac, Baie- du-Tombeau and Ste-Croix where they searched through the shelves. The first seizures took place on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, adulterated rum was found in Shell petrol station in Port-Louis.

<B>Gray’s bottles used by counterfeiters</B>

The shop owner, Mahendranath Jhurry, will have to give explanations to the police as soon as he comes back from a trip to Tunisia.

According to Grays management, bottles, which were not returned to Grays, could have been used by the illegal network to market adulterated alcohol. Retailers have the right to keep bottles in their shops if they are not sold but a deposit must be paid to the factory. The commercial executive of Grays, Alexis Harel, will go to the police on Monday to help shed light on this possibility.

François Cheong Win Yuen and Ah Loon Wong Hen Ling have been arrested by the police in connection with this case. They are provisionally charged with unlawful possession of excisable goods. They were, however, bailed out after signing IOUs of Rs 15,000 and Rs 25,000 respectively. They were arrested after Danan Seetapah, a shop owner in St Pierre, said these two men had been delivering whisky to him at a competitive price for more than a month. Adulterated whisky was found in his shop.

When the police made a thorough search of the premises of Ah Loon Wong Hen Ling at Ste-Croix last Tuesday, they seized two receipt books, King Robert and Seven Seas labels, two bags full of caps and 100 litres of alcohol. The second suspect gave the name of another businessman to the police who will soon confront him with the suspect’s statement.

One important question remains: how could the suspects have so many caps bearing the Grays trademark in their possession? The police think these caps could have been stolen when they were transferred from the harbour to the factory. However, the main difference between a faked cap and one going out of the factory is the presence of a dilution bar code.

However, if the coding machine breaks down, it is possible that a certain number of bottles are not marked. This is what happened to 11,000 bottles, which have been ready to go on the market since February but were still in the factory because they were not properly marked. The CEO, Alain Vallet, however admits that some bottles could be on the market “by mistake”. “But the product still respects the norms of consumption.” Customs officers have been making an inventory of those bottles.

The customs department is already thinking of new methods of guaranteeing more security in factories and preventing such incidents from occuring again. Naimduth Bissessur has met stakeholders of distilleries and bottling factories to discuss the issue…