74,000 litres of methanol were seized in police raids on three depots in Stung Meanchey II commune of Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district on June 1. CCC
Officials from the Ministry of Interior’s Counter Counterfeit Committee (CCC) are searching for the parties responsible for the more than 74,000 litres of methanol seized in police raids on three depots in Stung Meanchey II commune of Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district on June 1.
In a press release on June 2, CCC said that in the operation they found a total of 45,240 litres of ethanol and 74,060 litres of methanol.
It said the goods confiscated purported to be purely ethanol-based but were actually made with methanol or a mixture of methanol and ethanol – unreliable at best and useless at worst for medical purposes such as killing viruses, including Covid-19.
“On March 30, 2020, Prime Minister Hun Sen . . . announced a crackdown on fake pharmaceutical and medical products of dubious quality that were being sold to prevent and treat Covid-19,” CCC said.
The press release said because illegal activities were being conducted at these three locations the prosecutor of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court decided to close them and temporarily suspend all business activities there.
“Currently, authorities are searching for the parties responsible in order to prosecute them according to the law,” it said.
According to CCC, raids on large-scale storage depots for counterfeit alcohol at this scale have never taken place before and signal increased seriousness and focus on enforcement efforts in this area.
“We have observed that a number of bad people have been importing, storing and distributing counterfeit alcohol in the Cambodian market, and doing so at a time when Cambodia is experiencing a crisis with Covid-19 that has greatly increased consumer demand.
“What they are doing is dangerous and irresponsible and it could easily have a negative impact on people’s health,” it said.
Mech Sophanna, the interior ministry’s secretary of state and CCC chairman, said on June 3 that the authorities had been investigating those involved in selling counterfeit alcohol and expect to make arrests at some point after following legal procedures.
“Our officers are continuing to search for the owner of this fake alcohol to bring him to justice. When the police raided the warehouses, only the workers were present. However, we have evidence and we know the identity of the suspect. We will not allow the perpetrators to escape justice – they must abide by the law,” he said.
Sophanna said he is now ordering authorities to seize the counterfeit alcohol that this illegal supplier had already distributed on the market by tracking it down through the purchase invoices found by the police during their raids.
The Ministry of Commerce’s General Department of Consumer Protection, Competition and Fraud Repression (CCF) in Phnom Penh has also cracked down and confiscated more than 40 tonnes of counterfeit alcohol this year.
