About two tons of hard liquor with fake excise bands were discovered by Bulgarian police in a warehouse and a distillery owned by a fellow colleague.

Authorities found about 1,500 fake excise bands, with their "unique" numbers repeating up to 26 times, in a distillery near Plovdiv, Valentin Petrov, head of National Police has said. 1.5 and 2-liter bottles have excise bands for 200-gram bottles, Petrov explained. Rakiya, Mastika, Vodka, and Cognac were among the liquor found in a storehouse in the village of Novi Pazar in the Southeast of the country.

The facilities where all the alcohol was found belong to the Keti Company, co-owned by Vassil Markov, chief sergeant in a Plovdiv police department. His wife claims that Markov was not directly involved in the business. Should his guilt be proven, the man will be fired.


Police are still finding it hard to figure out exactly what amount of alcohol has already been sold, and they are yet to run a test on the spirits' quality. However preliminary reports claim that the state has suffered losses of thousands of levs because of unpaid excise taxes.

The distillery was opened in 1994 and has a license for producing alcohol.

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