In kyrgyzstan

(REUTERS)

Investigators have seized 127 rare falcons worth an estimated $5 million that were being smuggled to Syria from a Russian military air base in Kyrgyzstan.

When investigators moved in, the birds hidden in boxes, were being loaded on to a passenger plane which was about to fly to Syria from the air base located near the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.

It is still unclear how the passenger plane had got into the military base. An Il-18 with a Russian crew, had been chartered by a local firm, Phoenix. A special investigation will be conducted to clarify this.

The birds had not been fed for two days and one of them had a broken leg. They are now recovering in a nursery and will be later returned to their natural habitat.

The Russian military, which rents the air base from the Kyrgyz government to help fight international terrorism, said it had nothing to do with the smuggling.

The ancient art of hunting with birds is still practiced in Arab states and enthusiasts spend large amounts of money on rare birds of prey, often smuggled from other countries.

(THE MOSCOW TIMES)

Text 8

DIPLOMAT ACCUSED OF SMUGGLING

(by Kevin O’Flynn)

A U.S. diplomat is being investigated by Domodedovo Airport police on suspicion of trying to smuggle 75 rare Soviet posters out of the country.

Louis O’Neill, a U.S. citizen and head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe mission to Moldova, was stopped at Domodedovo on March 16 with five tubes stuffed with Soviet propaganda posters from the 1920s hidden in his suitcase, Foreign Ministry and customs officials said.

The posters were confiscated, and O’Neill, who had diplomatic immunity, was allowed to fly out of Russia. The case has been classified as a smuggling attempt and is being investigated by transport police at Domodedovo. The crime is punishable by up to seven years in prison and 1 million ruble fine (about $38,600).

The posters O’Neill was trying to take out of the country included ones “that had museum value and were national treasures”, Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement on the ministry’s web site.

When asked what he had in his suitcase, O’Neill said he only had personal belongings, a map and work documents.

Anyone traveling with artworks is required to apply for a permit to take it out the country, said a spokesman for the Federal Service for Media Law Compliance and Cultural Heritage, the government agency that decides whether artwork or antiques are allowed out of the country.

Among the posters in O’Neill’s case were works by artists Dmitry Moor and Viktor Deni, Soviet artists who made some of the most famous propaganda posters of the 1920s. One of the most famous Moor’s posters is the one that shows a Red Army soldier pointing out of the poster with the question “Have You Signed Up as a Volunteer?” underneath.

It is difficult to estimate how much the posters might be worth, said the art director at Sovkom auction house, which specializes in Soviet art. The value depends on the poster’s condition and how rare it is. Prices can range from $100 to $1,000, though one poster was sold at Sovkom recently for $5,000. The investigator said O’Neill had been planning to sell the posters, worth up to $100,000.

Komsomolskaya Pravda cited an unidentified investigator as saying O’Neill was under surveillance even before he was stopped at the airport and that authorities had taped his telephone discussions with dealers in Soviet posters.

“I’m an ambassador with the OCSE, I have a diplomatic passport, so let’s not search me, O’Neill said when stopped at the airport. “I want to sit on the plane and finish eating my apple.” O’Neill called the accident a provocation when he flew back to Chisinau.

(THE MOSCOW TIMES)

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CONVENTION TO COMBAT FAKE MEDICINE SIGNED

(by Anatoly Medetsky)

Russia, France, Germany and several other mostly European countries signed the first-ever international treaty to combat the growing multibillion-dollar counterfeit drugs industry.

The Council of Europe-sponsored Medicrime Convention, signed in Moscow, obliges signatory states to criminalize a broad range of activities that make possible the sale of fake medicines that harm patients and deprive legal producers of revenues.

Health and Social Development Minister, who signed the treaty on behalf of Russia, said the government would beef up penalties for the crimes to comply with the new requirements. The convention introduces minimum standards for the criminal law of the signatory countries.

«The global trend has been that these crimes were often not considered as serious enough to merit criminal law measures».

Ambassadors and diplomats of Austria, Finland, Italy, Israel, Iceland, Portugal, Switzerland and Ukraine have signed the treaty. It establishes as criminal offenses such activities as the manufacturing of counterfeit medical products (including equipment), their supply and offers to supply, trafficking and the falsification of related documents.

In an Interpol operation last month, law enforcement officers seized more than 2.5 million doses of fake and unlicensed medicines in 79 countries. The drugs were being sold on pharmacy web sites that were run, hosted or facilitated by Russians or Chinese, while most of the counterfeit products came from Chinese suppliers.

According to the World Health Organization, counterfeit medical products sometimes account for more than 50 percent of market value in developing countries. In some parts of Europe they represent between 6 percent and 20 percent of the market. That number is less than 1 percent in developed countries where there is efficient regulatory control.

(THE MOSCOW TIMES)

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COUNTERFEIT KALASHNIKOV MAKERS COME UNDER FIRE

(by Hannah Gardner and Ellen Pinchuk)

The government is fighting to stop the unlicensed manufacture of the Kalashnikov assault rifle in other countries, 60 years after the weapon went into production.

Global production of the world’s most abundant firearm “creates the possibility in a series of countries to avoid responsibility for what is basically the production of counterfeit goods,” Finance Minister said in an interview. “We will, of course, fight for our rights.”

The country’s targeting of counterfeit Kalashnikovs underscores the success of the brand since Mikhail Kalashnikov first began to design a weapon while lying wounded in a hospital bed during World War II. In 1947, his work culminated in the AK-47, the most successful assault rifle in history, for which the Soviet Union granted production licenses to friendly states.

When the permits started expiring in the late 1980s and early 1990s, production continued unabated as the Soviet Union collapsed. Currently, there are about 30 factories worldwide, including plants in China, Poland and Bulgaria. Russia accounted for just 10 percent of global Kalashnikov production last year, said General Director of Izhevsk-based Izhmash, a factory that makes Kalashnikovs. “When you see that there’s a huge fight against piracy over CDs and DVDs, and in such an important area of production our rights are being violated, of course it’s insulting,” he said in an interview.

Rosoboronexport, the country’s state arms exporter, is working with governments to resolve the issue.

Russia is the world’s third-largest arms exporter, after the United States and France, and is the biggest supplier of weapons to developing nations, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service. Russia exported $6.5 billion of arms last year.

The government now plans to regain market share by promoting the homegrown values of Russian Kalashnikovs over foreign-made versions. The quality of machine guns made in Russia is much better. The Russian-made original carries a premium overseas, costing as much as five-times more than a non-Russian gun in Asia, Afghanistan and Latin America. Foreign-made weapons are “far inferior” to those produced in Russia, said Mikhail Kalashnikov, now 87. “We’ve tested them dozens of times and we see that it’s just cheap junk that should be thrown away,” he said.

(BLOOMBERG)