Europol targets gang charging up to €15,000 for fake wine

Simultaneous raids by French, Italian and Swiss investigators have rounded up alleged members of a gang selling bottles of cheap red wine with counterfeit labels for €15,000.

The sweeps took place across 14 locations, including the cities of Milan and Turin, in a Europol-backed investigation first launched in 2021.

Investigators revealed that the criminal gang forged the fake wine in Italy, believed to have sold €2 million of bottles. The next step involved the product being delivered to an Italian airport, before being exported for sale at market value all over the world by honest wine traders.

The criminal network managed to sell its bottles at such high value by counterfeiting French Protected Designation of Origin (Appellation d’Origine Protégée, or AOP).

The AOP classification is the most stringent in the EU’s wine ranking system. To earn it, wine must be made from grapes grown in a specific geographical area while following strict production methods and regulations.

Wine stickers, as well as wax products, technical machines to recap bottles, electronic equipment valued at €1.4 million and over €100,000 in cash were among the seized goods.

Caught red-handed

A 40-year old Russian national with previous convictions is suspected to be at the heart of the case.

“His actions are what would have enabled the structuring of a transnational counterfeiting organisation,” said Dijon public prosecutor Olivier Caracotch.

The Russian suspect was reportedly caught red-handed carrying out a transaction with a printer at Milan Malpensa airport. According to the Italian gendarmerie and the French judiciary, the criminal organisation worked with printers to produce fake labels.

The man’s past convictions date back 10 years, at which time he went by the name Aleksandr Iugov.

The Dijon prosecutor said the suspect “should be presented quickly to establish his possible indictment”. He added that a French citizen has also been indicted in Dijon for “money laundering and organised fraud”.

Dijon lies in the French region of Burgundy, where Bourgogne wine is produced. This is one of the wines the gang is said to have exploited, namely bottles produced by the Romanée-Conti domain. Bottles from this winery regularly sell for thousands of even hundreds of thousands of euros.

But in 2024, wet conditions across France wreaked havoc on many wine-growing regions, and many producers saw their output suffer.

Wine fraud and mislabelling is not a new problem, and the EU has introduced a new set of rules which will apply to all wines and wine products from the 2024 harvest.

Under this legislation, all bottles of wine sold in the EU, regardless of their country of origin, will have to include nutritional information and a list of ingredients.