Thanh Nien exposé busts fake beer business in Vietnam metro.
Ho Chi Minh City police Wednesday arrested four men believed to be members of a ring that produced and traded in fake products of world famous beer brands Heineken and Tiger.
The arrests followed a Thanh Nien exposé.
A Thanh Nien reporter found the fake beer, which is a mixture of a local beer Saigon with Heineken or Tiger, being produced in the 20-square-meter room of a house belonging to Vo Thanh Cong, 44.
Cong’s house is situated in an alley in Tan Binh District.
Workers there deliver the beer and collect money in the morning and gather in the room with lots of beer bottles and a fridge with beer of the three brands, at around 8 p.m. for making the fake beer.
The beer in ice for six to seven hours to prevent the gas from rising and beer from overflowing when mixed.
Two of six male workers, without gloves and protective clothes, pour half of the beer from a 330-ml Heineken or Tiger bottle into an empty one of the same brand.
Two others pour Saigon beer into the two bottles to make it full, before one put caps on the bottles for the last worker to close it firmly.
Following Thanh Nien’s submission of evidence, the economic crimes investigation division (PC46) caught Thach Muone, 23, on Tuesday morning when he was carrying seven cases of Tiger beer to an eatery in Tan Binh and failed to produce bills for the beer.
Muone confessed that Cong had ordered him to deliver the beer.
Police then raided Cong’s house and seized another 17 cases of Heineken, 38 cases of Tiger and two cases of Saigon beer, a machine to fix the caps to the bottles, several beers bottles and caps and papers related to the business.
Cong told police that his gang produced at least 60 cases of fake beer every day to sell to several restaurants and eateries in the city with prices of VND235,000-255,000 (US$11.2-12.1) per case for Tiger and VND310,000 per case for Heineken. Each case has 24 bottles.
Some workers who used to work for Cong said on condition of anonymity that Cong and his workers bought the used Heineken and Tiger beer bottles and caps from restaurants and eateries. These were cleaned with alcohol, dried and used for filling the spurious beer.
They said the fake beer has to be used very soon, or it would get spoiled. They also said that chemical residues after cleaning the bottles made the beer impossible to keep for a long time.
Police on Wednesday arrested Cong, Muone and two other men, Le Van Tuan, 35, and Do Quat Chi, 45, to investigate the fraud further.
Click the video below to see what the police has recorded.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=1MGGCy4Kw20