REAL LIFE NEWS: CRIMINAL ROAD REPAIRS
by Hazed
What do you do if you’re a criminal who wants to smuggle goods past customs officials? You find an alternate route. And if the road you want to use isn’t good enough for your lorries – you improve it!
That’s how a country road near the Russia-Belarus border was upgraded from something only a horse and cart could navigate, to a much more modern highway. Smugglers came at night and used heavy earth-moving equipment to “widen and raise the gravel track, and put in more turning and passing points” so they could drive lorries full of contraband EU fruit without Russian customs officials seeing them.
A few weeks ago, customs officials cottoned on to what was happening and laid an ambush on the newly-upgraded road. They caught a convoy of nine lorries full of Greek and Polish fruit. The haul weighed 175 tons and was worth 13m roubles ($200,000).
However, they don’t know who it was that upgraded the road which runs through the tiny Russian village of Klimenki. Villages have said they saw crews working on the road earlier this year and the local administration chief Sergei Listopadov said he’d like to write a letter of thanks to the smugglers for improving the road.
But customs officers are not amused; they don’t have the authority to dig the road up again so have to stake the route out to catch smugglers red-handed. Meanwhile, the locals get the benefit from the crooks’ roadworks.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-37166353
